Talk:2012 Quebec student protests

Response to POV

New to 'contributing'. I am just translating the French entry to have it accessible in English, which seems fair, whether it be contentious or not. I will attempt to weed out any 'stance-taking' and reframe future and present translation ....such as 'arguments for' vs 'arguments against'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trad2012 (talk • contribs) 14:30, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Here is an example of stance-taking: "Tuition has been rising across the nation at a rate significantly above the rate of inflation for several decades. This stands in contrast with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which Canada ratified in 1976 and states "[h]igher education shall be made equally accessible to all...in particular by the progressive introduction of free education."

This first presents data which is fine, then judges it and claims that it is against this covenant that Canada has signed. However, equally accessible to all does not mean that tuition cannot rise, or rise faster than inflation. If tuition has been artificially held low, for example in Quebec since it has frozen tuition at times for 20 years, then it can rise very quickly, much faster than inflation. If student aid packages are put in place, as in the OECD data which has since been deleted, explaining that the OECD finds that tuition cost is not the primary, or even the important figure in accessibility to education, but it is the support system (housing, loans, bursaries, scholarships, grants) that is the primary factor in accessibility to education. Rather this statement is just made as a fact that the rising tuition violates this covenant, which is simplistic, disagrees with the references cited by this article, and was illustrated to be incorrect in the section I added which has since been deleted. So this statement above is something that needs to go ... -OR- someone needs to take these statements and put it together into some kind of student manifesto section so it's clear that these are their claims. That the cited references do not bear out the claims I think should be in this article as well. But certainly what can't stand is these kinds of statements that are making conclusions and are not supported. The OECD data is a bit complex but it does illustrate that the relationship of tuition and student aid vs. accessible education is a complex one with multiple approaches and solutions. Cherry picking one part to push a political point worries me tremendously because people will read it and accept it as a fact.

Since the article previously took the approach of making mis-statements then linking a citation that nobody checked, that had a completely different meaning, it's clear that you can get it wrong, but the presence of a citation beside your mistake (on purpose or not) is going to have it be accepted by the readers as truth. With the history of this in this article it needs to be watched. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 08:44, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

POV

As it stands right now, I think that this article is at risk of violating WP:NPOV. Clearly this strike is a contentious issue both in and out of Quebec, but we should do our best to ensure it remains neutral. Of particular concern to me is the section "Economic Realities of Quebec Students", which seems to be written from a fairly pro-strike stance. Peter McLaren (talk) 23:27, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree, the article as a whole has major neutrality issues. I might do a major rewrite and expansion tomorrow time dependant. If this is a direct translation from the French version, somebody fluent will need to do a rewrite from their as well. Ben Reedijk

I've removed the tag, as the above concerns are very vague (it's POV because it's POV) and the current article appears to me satisfactory. If people feel this is an error, though, I'm fine with being reverted. Khazar2 (talk) 18:25, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with your removal of the tag, obviously as does the person who put the tag in place and the previous user who commented. So you are on your own about it not being neutral. The article clearly took the side of the student protestors. Rather than insert the tag back in, I've gone ahead and fleshed out the article. I have cited the various issues at length below. Things like choosing only countries with lower tuition rates as comparison items, calling a molotov cocktail a "projectile" while referring to the police response as violent, and only presenting critical points of view on BIll 78, these are all single points of view and are weaselly in support of the students.

There really is a responsibility here to present the information as it has happened, and the data as it exists, without continually cherry picking on behalf of the students. I have not removed any of the salient points made in the original article, but where they have presented only the single and political point of view of the students, the other missing data has been filled in and the points of view of the other parties involved in this dispute have been noted. I think we have to insist that this article is not used as a political rallying item. That is, it's easy enough for people to come here, insert their own facts, go back to their own groups on Facebook or whatever and then point back at this article as an authoritative source for information to rally the troops. I suggest that this article probably should be locked. I have no idea how bad the French one is, but I would suspect from the English article the French one is pretty one sided.

If this beef is legitimate on behalf of the students, then it can certainly be convincing enough by telling the entire story without cherry picking facts to support one side, while demonizing the other with words like violent when these students brought fire bombs to the march. The purpose of this article is to explain what is going on, and to explain the positions of the various people involved in this political conflict. It is not here to take sides, to judge what is the most important issue, or to use hype or rhetoric to make the point of one of the parties.

Your argument makes sense; I simply removed it for technical reasons, since whoever had tagged the article for NPOV concerns a month ago had failed to provide any rationale here on the talk page. However, at a glance, it appears to me that the current version has significant problems with WP:SYNTH; the OECD source, which now makes up a third of the article, does not refer to the protests in any way. It would be better if possible to find comparative statistics on tuition that have been brought up in the specific context of the protests--surely, given the national coverage this has received, this won't be a problem. It would also be important to hear how protesters respond to these comparative arguments, if they're going to be given such length in the article. The article also fails in its current state to give any "voice" to protesters, which is odd, as they're the main subject here; having read several versions of it, I'm still unclear as to their actual demands. There doesn't appear to be even a single line about why the protesters object to the tuition increase, which surely is not satisfactory. I'm retagging this article as POV for now until it includes some form of the protester demands, and the WP:SYNTH has been better integrated or removed. If there's a consensus that I'm wrong to do so, of course, I'll be happy to be reverted. Khazar2 (talk) 20:02, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what you are doing. You let the article stand and said it was fair without checking the references. When I checked the references they were *mis-quoted* -or- *selectively mined* for supporting information. These elements formed the backing argument for the protests against the tuition increase. When this information was adjusted to correctly represent the data that was being cited, you now find that it is not relevant. First it was OK and you didn't notice that it was misrepresented, now that it is correct you find it's irrelevant and needs to go. Now you're asking where is the rationale for their protests? The rationale is the first set of mis-quoted articles and mis-represented data.... that became corrected... that you then deleted. The fact that they are mining specific bits of information selectively from these reports does help people understand the validity of their claims, and as such, I think it is highly relevant.

So I don't know how you expect to fix that, because you can list their claims and since they seem to be mis-representations of the cited articles, they can't really exist here without having the mis-representation addressed. That's up to you to figure out but I think we cannot just let one party make political claims that are not borne out by their references and just leave it here as facts. I won't be editing the article further, because as I said above, I expected that I'd be highly reverted which I was. I am not going to waste any further time on the article where corrections get wiped out by someone who is having trouble assessing the article from a POV standpoint. I would suggest that your inability to see that in the first place and that you said it was fine without checking the references out means you should probably not be editing the article further anyway and someone should call in a proper caretaker for this article.

Well, as stated above, I removed the POV tag because the discussion provided no rationale, was a month stale, and I saw no obvious issues on my first glance; you can see Template:POV for how the guidelines on this work. The burden is on the person who places the tag to identify issues with the article, and no one bothered to. I agree that the catches you made on closer reviews of sources were good ones, particularly the molotov cocktails. That said, I did find the large amounts of WP:SYNTH material added to the article to be problematic for POV reasons, and have offered clear suggestions on how to fix the issue: delete any claims based on sources that don't mention the protests directly, and instead draw only on statements from the protesters, statements from their critics, and coverage of the protests in reliable secondary sources. There's some left in the article still and your help would be welcome to weed it out.

As for your request for me not to edit the article further, this is silly and is not going to happen. Rest assured, there's a number of other editors taking a look at this one, and consensus will overrule any bad decisions I make personally. I'll be the first to admit that I make my share, but luckily Wikipedia does not rely solely on any one man. Khazar2 (talk) 08:46, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I fundamentally disagree that instructing the editorial body of Wikidepia as to how you believe an article should be written and keeping a POV tag on the article until you are satisfied is within the policies of Wikipedia. There is no rule against using supportive sources for comments made by participants in the event within the other references of the article--especially as the French version of this article is full of them, and there is no tag on that article due purely to that reason. The article as it stands mentions both sides of the issue, makes no supportive statements to either side, and has been cleaned for puffery. I look forward to a consensus on this article so that we can move past this silliness.Jeremy112233 (talk) 22:27, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

There appears to be a significant misunderstanding here. You seem to be saying I'm somehow filibustering this page, I've expressed my concerns and stated repeatedly that if the consensus is that I'm wrong, I'm fine with the POV and/or the SYNTH tags being removed. That discussion hasn't really taken place. So far we've heard from an IP who wants to leave the POV tag (below in "Neutrality") and you who wants it gone, plus Charlie Echo Tango's comments in edit summary only. Two editors (CET and MTLSkyline) have agreed with me on the SYNTH concerns. Based even on that, I've said I'm fine with the POV tag removed if no other editors object; you ignored that response to your comment and instead came up to this thread to blast me.

If you feel I'm in violation of Wikipedia policy, please let me know what specific policies you'd like me to review. Khazar2 (talk) 23:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

French article

is at fr:Grève étudiante québécoise de 2012. There's masses of references and stuff. Peridon (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

This is currently being translated directly from the French article. Last entry, April 14, 2012. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.59.65.133 (talk) 03:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

IT APPEARS I AM TO ADD WHAT HAS BEEN TRANSLATED TO THE TALK PAGE TO ENSURE COPYRIGHT COMPLIANCE, AS PER INSTRUCTIONS. Despite previous actions, the student strike officially got under way on February 13, 2012, and, as of March 26, 2012, involved 193 000 students and 171 student associations. On March 22, 2012, in Montreal, a large national march (i.e. provincial) was one of the largest in its history. The demonstration organisers estimate that 200 000 people took part. (Translated from French Wikipedia article) [edit]CONTEXT University tuition fees in Quebec were frozen at $540 per year from 1968 to 1990. In 1994, tuition rose to $1668 per year, after which it was frozen until 2007, when it grew by $100 per year until 2012, making it $2168. Overall, tuition increased 300% between 1989 and 2012, not including other fees that are paid to universities (e.g. administration fees, student service fees, etc.). [1] (Translated from French Wikipedia article) On May 19, 1976, Canada signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in which Article 13 stipulates: Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education; (Paragraph 2.c) [2] Only a third of OCDE countries have tuition rates higher than $1500 USD.[3] The Economic Realities of Quebec Students As students' and parents' ability to pay is taken into account, 40% of students do not receive any financial support from their parents, and two thirds no longer live with them: 80% work while studying full time. Half live with $12 200 per year (the poverty level being $16 320 per year). Statistics Canada determined that to go into debt to study has long term consequences and that the 200% tuition increase resulted in an increase of student debt from 49% to 57% between 1995 and 2005.[4] (Translation from French version of Wikipedia article) The hike in tuition fees and debt levels add to levels of anxiety of a possible 'national crisis'[5] , and of a speculative bubble that will only profit financial institutions that are in charge of managing government student loans. Certain American observers compare student debt to household debt situation before the bursting of the housing bubble. [6]" Trad2012 (talk) 03:03, 16 April 2012 (UTC)Trad2012

how to turn a true statement into a false one

Here's the text from the cited article:

"Out of 32 developed countries, Canada had the second-highest rate of education spending in proportion to its GDP at more than 2.5%, trailing only the United States. A high proportion of that spending, 43.4 per cent in 2007, came from private sources, **primarily** tuition fees."

Here is the text from the wikipedia article:

" In Canada, 57% of the cost of education is covered by the public, the rest comes from private sources, **namely** tuition fees."

The meaning of the first is that the primary source (meaning the largest source) of the 43.4% of funding is from tuition fees. The author of the article has warped the meaning and by using "namely" in place of "primarily" has indicated that the entire 43.4% not-from-public funding is from tuition. Furthermore by dropping the context (Canada's public spending #2 out of 32 developed countries on education vs. GDP), the author further smacks of bias.

I am going to adjust the text to match the quotation correctly that is cited in the article.

I suspect this will be reverted by someone, in which case we truly have a POV problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 05:23, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

relative cost of tuition

Once again this article was cherry picking, comparing Quebec's tuition cost only to "similar" countries which were conveniently chosen to be a set of countries with lower tuition. It is arguable that Canada is more similar to Australia than it is to Italy or Spain, in terms of population size, culture, taxation and public spending, so it is not exactly fair to group Canada with Spain, Belgium, Italy and Austria and ignore the USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Again, it's the bias that is spread all through this article, which is not likely much of a surprise given the author. I have broken out the tuition discussion into its own section. It may not be surprising to find out then that the tuition situation is a bit more complicated than just grabbing a few countries who have smaller costs than Quebec and using that as an argument to say Canadian tuition is too high. The Nordic countries that bear a very high tax burden also have free tuition and furthermore give substantial amounts of student aid, where the formerly "similar" countries that were compared for lower tuition also have the lowest amount of student aid available. High tuition countries also, with the exception of Japan, provide very high rates of availability for student aid. This entire area bears more study and I think by presenting the data as expressed in the cited document provides the required neutral point of view and lets the reader understand where Canada lies within the bigger picture of developed countries. As one might guess, pretty close to the middle between the high-tax/free-education and the low-tax/expensive-education groups. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 06:00, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

judgments

This article decided it was to judge what was the most important thing about the new law being passed. I have deleted the phrase which renders judgment over the most important parts of the bill, and instead indicated that it was notable, which it is. Different people will have different points of view on what is most important in this bill. Furthermore, this article has taken the point of view that the restrictions on the protest rights of the students was important because it contravened fundamental rights. However, business leaders have come out in favor of this particular section, considering it important but for the opposite reason, because it will reduce the risk to business and economic damage in their opinion by restricting protest rights. Lastly students who want to go to school who have been intimidated by striking students disrupting classes may consider it important because it protects their right to have the education for which they have already paid and decided to pursue. Neither of these latter two points of view were addressed by this article. I will probably add them next once I go back and look up the citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 06:08, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

general cleanup, more reactions

I added more reactions by law professors, students, business leaders as above. I've fixed grammar and spelling where I found errors. The article previously decided that molotov cocktails being thrown was not notable, while the police reaction to said cocktails was. I've added the information as it is of particular note in the cited article and I think it is fair to say that a molotov cocktail is not a "projectile" as the article would previously have had the reader believe.

I think this article's making some good progress, but it's still noticeably light in discussion of the protest events themselves; as an uninformed reader, I still have very little sense of what happened. The OECD report gets enormous weight here, but I don't see any statements from student leaders, etc. on their demands, or on the specific trigger for the first protest (if there was one). Is it possible for someone more knowledgeable to fill this in? Khazar2 (talk) 18:03, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. This article at the moment looks like it is trying to give all of this unnecessary background info about tuition costs. I removed the OECD section, since it seems to have little to do with the protests, which is the subject of the article after all.--MTLskyline (talk) 23:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

The OECD section was put in because it was previously being selectively mined for information to support the student protests. I had a choice of deleting it or else expanding on it so that the information shown was correct. So I expanded on it. I don't know if deleting it is a good idea because it provides the background for the protests. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 08:16, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality

I have made the effort to make this article neutral in order to remove the tag, as I will next do. Please review my changes and let me know if there is more to be done--I'll happily come back and add more sources to one or the other side, and reduce any noted puffery. At this point the article is balanced to a better degree.Jeremy112233 (talk) 06:58, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that your efforts have improved the article, but I'm not sure the two issues I raised above when placing it have been addressed yet. First, I'm concerned that the article has almost nothing about the rationale for the protests, or statements by the protesters. (To pick on a small example, I'm not sure why we should have a comment by the education minister about the protesters, but not by the protesters about the minister.) Given that the protests are ostensibly the focus of the article, surely at least a paragraph is needed here explaining their rationale. (Responses and critiques of that rationale, too, of course). But it seems unbalanced not to include a single statement or argument from them, but to include statements from law professors, business leaders, ministers, etc. This is my main issue.

Second, the "background" section seems to still be largely WP:SYNTH--facts assembled to make a case one way or another about the tuition in Canada. It'd be better if this was rewritten to provide these facts from coverage of the protests--surely this is a hot topic enough in Canada right now to spawn articles like "How High Is Tuition Really?" or "Tuition Pros and Cons", etc. But linking facts from unrelated news stories and primary sources (instead of letting the secondary sources do the linking) still falls under the header of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH.

Thanks for taking the time to improve this one. I'm restoring the tag for now, unless others feel I'm overreaching in my concerns. It's no comment on your contributions, though, just on what's still missing. Khazar2 (talk) 07:18, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Definitely leave the tag in. But I don't agree with you deleting the majority of my edits. What we had here was a one sided article, and you could not see the lack of neutrality. I added in the other sides, and you have gone and deleted it all. If you felt that the minister's comments about the students should be balanced by the reverse statement, then you can source a reverse statement and put it in there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 08:18, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're referring to here; the only things I can remember deleting are things that fall under my SYNTH concern expressed above. Can you provide a diff from the article history? Khazar2 (talk) 08:23, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I apologize someone else jumped in and deleted a bunch of stuff too. I spent hours correcting that stupid data and it's irritating to just have it wiped away by someone who doesn't understand why it's there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.246.210 (talk) 08:35, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

After Jeremy's comments and those of Charlie Echo Tango, I'm game for seeing the tag removed if the consensus here is that it should be. Is that okay with everyone? Khazar2 (talk) 16:43, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Thinking about this a little more--and re-reading the surprising anger up above even after I offered to remove the tag--I think I've become an unhelpful flashpoint for editors who need to be talking to each other as well as me. Since I haven't had much time to improve this article anyway, I'll simply bow out of this one. Feel free to do with the tags as you will, but please do remember to seek consensus with each other before pulling the POV tag again, per Template:POV. Cheers to all, Khazar2 (talk) 07:31, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I've reworded the "stands in contrast to" section and dropped a fact tag on the inflation comment. As sourced earlier in the article, tuition in Quebec has in fact risen at a much lower rate than inflation...this is true for other provinces as well, as far as I know, but I'd like to give the author or anyone with more knowledge an opportunity to source the claim. Once the claim is sourced or removed, I would be OK with removing the neutrality tag. Schrodingers Mongoose (talk) 17:30, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

The historical section reads like a protest pamphlet! Krazytea(talk) 22:57, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm a journalist covering the student strike, and I find there are several instances of significant bias against the student cause, which lack citations. The most egregious of these was the description of Bill 78. I changed the language there and added a citation to a Montreal Gazette article about the law. I don't have time to do more now, but there are some issues which need to be ironed out. In particular more sources and citations would help a lot...QuebecObserver (talk) 08:22, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

more creep on POV

I see the list of "events" is now a one sided list of great things the protestors did and acts of police brutality against them. How about the barricades being set on fire, that was front page news all across Canada, but no mention here. Also, the "300,000 - 400,000" in this march is laughable. The estimate is coming from an "independent journalist" Martin Lukacs who has a few pieces in The Guardian. He does not cite police or any other credible groups with expertise in estimating crowd size. The Globe and Mail said "Tens of thousands of people clogged Montreal’s city core in a festive, multi-headed march designed to make a mockery of a new provincial law that demands protest routes be approved in advance." -and- "Organizers said the crowd size rivalled the massive protests held the two previous months, on the 22nd of March and April." -and- previously the 22nd of March rally was said to draw 120,000 cited here: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/22/massive-student-strike-begins-with-port-blockade and 200,000 for April 22nd. -here- http://www.globalmontreal.com/video/earth+day+protests/video.html?v=2225886182 ...

So in this case we have an "independent journalist" who writes for a "grass roots newspaper" writing an uncited estimate of 400,000 people while the organizers themselves say that the march only rivaled the two previous large marches (which would indicate numbers slightly below the previous two marches up to the same number, otherwise it would "exceed"). And we have the Gazette using "tens of thousands".

Lastly this sentence is finished off with hyperbole comparing it to the size of the population of Montreal.

This is all POV material meant to exaggerate the size of this march and create emotional impact. It's not backed up by any accredited journalist, or police force, or independent organization with the knowledge set to estimate crowd control.

So will you stop, you all on your own (you know who you are) removing the POV tag on this article. There are enough people concerned with it that it needs to stay in and you overriding multiple people wanting this tag is making Wikipedia your personal fiefdom for your *own* point of view.

Furthermore this article goes on to imply that newspapers are calling this the biggest act of protest, where the Gazette in the reference is only quoting the protest organizers. At best, the protest organizers are biased to their own cause by definition. If we want to quote them then we should quote them and not use a weasel reference to insert material here as facts when it is a quote from one of the players. If a government official were to say nobody participated in the protest, and a newspaper were to quote them, we could not write here "Nobody participated in the protest" and stick a reference in there.

That's just plain old dishonest now.

This is multiple times that references have been distorted and misinterpreted, exaggerating the case of the protestors. I think it is deliberate and it's part of why this thing should have a POV tag on it, because it keeps happening and while our one resident tag remover seems to be blind to the issue, it doesn't mean it's not happening. He is happy to remove tags but not so happy to check references and see if the information presented actually represents what is in the article.

I put the POV tag back in because this is a recurring issue on this page, people are injecting political material voiced by one of the parties and citing it as fact. So the article continues sliding back away from a neutral point of view and becomes a platform for exaggerating the protests / magnifying their claims.

I removed the synth tag by accident and am putting it back in because of these same reasons.

I am going to act like others then and just delete the offending material. If someone wants to find an accurate estimate by an independent body of the march size and put it in, then do so. Independent journalists are about as good as using a blogger as a reference, and this is not suitable for an encyclopedia. I would like to submit that using The Guardian is about as good as using Sean Hannity in terms of accuracy but I will just levy the criticism at the particular "reporter" on this one. And please let's keep the emotional hyperbole out of the article, I know that some of you want to exaggerate every single thing about the protest, but if it has merits then the facts will do. Next thing we'll read is that it covered the size of Rhode Island.

I'm fine to leave the POV tag, however, criticizing local crowd estimate sources and then citing a TORONTO TABLOID newspaper is probably not the best idea. It's in the police's interest to either not comment on the crowd size or severely underestimate its size. This is true for any mass-gathering around the globe. If you are actually living in Toronto right now, then I can understand your frustration as you simply can not understand what's happening in Montreal. It doesn't take a "counting expert" to look at the aerial shots and determine that it's not just "tens of thousands." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.252.80.18 (talk) 17:26, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Green squares and red squares

There should be coverage on the symbols used, the red square by the protesters, the green squares by those students who are against the protesters, etc. 70.24.251.208 (talk) 06:33, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

It would be much easier if you linked news articles discussing these symbols. Without those, we can't add a single thing to the article. Silverseren^C 04:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

24%

almost 400,000 people marched on downtown Montreal (roughly 24% of the population of that city)

I don't think that "roughly 24% of the population of that city" is good, since Montreal is part of a metropolitan region, and the students and protesters come in from the metro area and not just Montreal, so it should be compared to the metropolitan population, not the central city's population, especially with the ease of access to the central city from outlying municipalities (such as Laval) With the metro area being almost 4 million people, the separation between 24% and 10% is a big difference. 70.24.251.208 (talk) 06:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Does the reference for the section say 24%? If it does, then that is what we have to put, unless you can find a different news article that accounts for the metro area as well and states a different percentage. If you can't find such a reference, then we can't (and shouldn't) change it. Silverseren^C 04:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Why "shouldn't"? If we just delete the parenthetical part, it would solve the issue. 70.24.251.208 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:25, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Except the only reason we'd be deleting it is your opinion on the numbers, when we're supposed to be representing the information as it is presented in the sources. Furthermore, there's no reason to believe that the metro area outside of the city proper had any effect on the protest unless there's a reliable source with information on it doing so. Silverseren^C 04:44, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an infodump. We don't have to add every single statistic to the article. 70.24.251.208 (talk) 05:30, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

That's true, but the percentage of the population that was attending is a rather important statistic. It both explains the size of the protests and how much students make up of the population. Silverseren^C 07:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Silver seren says that the only reason we would be deleting the percentages is that it would be opinion to do so. In fact, whoever added the parenthetical comment added opinion. The cited source does not refer to percentage of population. Though I believe that that source from The Guardian should not even be used. It is from their "Comment Is free" section and I doubt that the facts are checked. The reference from the Montreal Gazette used in the following sentence puts the crowd estimate at 250,000 by the organizers and 75,000 to 150,000 by others. --Ydgrunite (talk) 20:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

POV: Historical Context

The Historical Context section is clearly written from the POV of a Canadian outside Quebec (the "lowest tuition fees in Canada" argument, transfer payments, etc). It conveniently omits the fact the Quebecers pay far more taxes than in any other province and that tuition fees in Quebec are already above-average among OCDE members. This is not the place to dicuss ROC gripes with Quebec. Historical Context should explain the history of student movements/protests in Quebec, with probably the Quiet Revolution as a starting point. Anyone up to the task of editing this section?

In the meantime, I'm removing the last paragraph which is clearly non-neutral and unrelated to the topic at hand. Reference 14 is an editorial, not a factual source:

"Canada in 2007 ranked second out of 32 developed countries in spending on education in proportion to its GDP: 56.6% of the cost of education was covered by the public, the balance (43.4%) came from private sources, primarily tuition fees. [13] In comparison, Quebec students pay only 10% of tuition and benefit from transfer payments from other provinces whose students pay up to three times more tuition. [14]"

--@philtrem, June 9, 02:44

Defamation

I have seen the name of an executive of the Dawson Student Union posted many times on this page despite the removal of it from numerous users. Since this is being done without the permission or the knowledge of the man in question, it is defamation and therefore goes against the Terms of Use of Wikipedia. For this reason, I ask whoever it is that keeps doing this to stop, or if not, to explain what their goal is in continuously causing this problem.

Thank you,

Kayla — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kchristos8 (talk • contribs) 18:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The name is being posted by persons who identified him in the photograph taken by the Gazette. The person in question is aware of his implication, and as the matter is a very public issue, I disagree that this is " defamation". It is less of a problem, and more like additional information. Considering his position in the student association, his public behavior is of importance, same as is the behavior of other major players such as G.N-D. Thanks.

TinBeast (talk) 18:32, 13 June 2012 (UTC)