Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael J. Devlin

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. W.marsh 21:59, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Michael J. Devlin

Michael J. Devlin (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Run of the mill kidnapper and pedophile. This one is famous because the producers of CNN, MSNBC and FoxNews thought the story would get good ratings, which it did. However, there are many thousands of pedophiles, and Wikipedia is neither a newspaper nor a registry of perverts. If this article is kept, it will be an endorsement of allowing Wikipedia content to be determined by the journalistic "ethics" (and I use the term loosely) and drive for ratings of people like Nancy Grace, Greta Van Sustern and Geraldo Rivera. Who's company do you want to keep? Thatcher131 16:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Wikipedia's rules on notability are that if a subject is covered by reliable sources, which the three cited by the nominator are, despite any bias they may have, then there is no reason not to have an article on it. While I personally think this is too liberal in the case of crime articles (cf my comments on the recent flood of nominations of British murder articles), the standard I would replace it with is that it should have been covered in depth by sources with national scope, which is clearly the case here. JulesH 16:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I would suggest, however, that the article is restructured to be an article about the case, rather than a bio of the suspect. JulesH 16:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Delete : Notoriety most certainly does not equal notability. Crime is a fickle beast, reports focus on the crime, not the perpetrator or the victim other than to enhance their coverage on the crime. The present train of thought would have every pedophile, murderer and rapist included. The reliability of newspapers to cover such crimes reliably and impartially is also cast into doubt and such POV issues with the sources will obviously impact on our ability to cover the subject neutrally. This chap was clearly not notable before the crime and isn't notable after it. Nick 16:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Suggestion - I agree Wikipedia needs to move away from articles that use news reports as their sole sources. That is something that Wikinews already does and Wikipedia should not overlap as much as it does. Wikipedia needs to concentrate on a dispassionate, short, accurate statements on such matters. Our document on reliable sources needs to make clear that news sources are often NOT reliable, and often distort and misrepresent things. If we present just the news media viewpoint, NPOV is affected. Pointing out contradictory news reports is a possible improvement. Wikipedia coverage of events like the Virginia Tech massacre Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, and other topical news stories all suffer from recentism. Several years on from the latter two events, more reliable sources are slowly being used, and updates are being added, but when an existing article with an extensive edit history exists, there is an inertia against the extensive rewrites that are eventually needed. In cases like this, I suggest paring down the article to a stub, then watching to see if it improves. Carcharoth 17:04, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Quoting from Wikipedia:Recentism:

  • "Recentism is the tendency by Wikipedians to edit articles without regard to long-term historical perspective, or to create new articles which inflate the importance and effect of an issue that has received recent media attention. Established articles become skewed towards documenting controversy as it happens, new articles are created on arguably flimsy merits, and the relative emphasis on (more or less) timeless facets of a topic which Wikipedia consensus had previously established is often muddled. Recentism is not by itself an argument for article deletion—lack of attributability and notability are—but it may make it more difficult to judge whether notability actually exists. What is recent is close, and what is close is hard to gain perspective on. Recentism is thus a symptom of Wikipedia's dynamic and immediate editorial process, and has both positive and negative aspects, as discussed below. Allegations of recentism should prompt consideration of proportion, balance, and due weight. Material may need to be moved, removed, or added. Certain articles may need to be placed on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion for community consideration; conversely, new articles may need to be created to balance Wikipedia's coverage. Wikipedians are reminded that sometimes in-depth information on current events is more appropriately added to Wikinews."

  • Which seems to me to sum up how this article should be dealt with. Carcharoth 17:08, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Delete or Redirect to an article about the kidnapping. This person doesn't seem particularly notable, though some valid arguments could be made that the kidnapping/event was notable. AniMate 19:37, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment There doesn't seem to currently be such an article, but this article contains much of the information that would be necessary to create one. Hence my suggestion above to rename and restructure it. JulesH 19:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The thing is, this is an article about the kidnapping, and not really a bio. As such, it violates WIkipedia is not a newspaper, and also suffers from recentism, as Carcharoth points out. While this is also true of JonBenét Ramsey (a murder case article masquerading as a bio), JonBenét Ramsey has at least survived the test of time, and simply moving the article to a different title (JonBenét Ramsey murder case) would be a meaningless excercise. Here, I think, it is too recent to know whether the Horbeck-Ownby kidnapping and molestation case will survive the test of time, or whether it is a flash in the pan fueled by the ratings-driven 24-hour news channels. Thatcher131 20:00, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that moving the JonBenet article would be a pointless exercise, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened due to some ridiculous BLP claim. There are many cases in which an event is best presented as a biography such as Stephen Lawrence. An example of a pointless move can be seen here. - hahnchen 21:01, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - Notable case of kidnapping with international coverage (I heard about this in Europe). If you want to move the article, that's fine. - hahnchen 21:01, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, this is ridiculous. Clearly a notable event, and worthy of an article. The man himself has been covered by the media, and become a notable criminal too. You may not like to hear about it, but we're not here to satisfy everyone's sensibilities, we're here to document human knowledge, and criminal activity is just as much a part of that as, say, the unpleasant bits of human physiology. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - it's time for wikipedia to stop being a newspaper. Fighting for Justice 23:31, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, This is absurd. More people know about this case than most other Wikipedia articles. John celona 23:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • More people know about the also-ran contestants on any reality show than most other Wikipedia articles, it doesn't make them notable or other other articles not notable, however. Carlossuarez46 18:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - This is a notable and noted case; thus, by extension, Devlin is also both notable and noted. (JosephASpadaro 06:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC))
• Delete WP does not stand for WikiPoliceblotter. Carlossuarez46 18:54, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
• Rename and rewrite to cover the kidnapping event, specifically focusing on the four year search for Shawn Hornbeck (Ownby, as a kidnapping, is pretty unnotable). Calwatch 04:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. To describe this person as "run of the mill" is subjective and irrelevant. As unfortunate as it may be, this predator is notable and warrants, not deserves, coverage by our project. We can do so in a neutral fashion given the abundance of reliable third party sources available. RFerreira 06:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but potentially rename; so many sources to make this notable. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 20:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Cultural weight is a valid reason to document the incident. Tfine80 21:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.