Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ward Weaver III

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 keep. There seems to be consensus that a merge is a good idea; I'll leave the implementation up to whoever is most interested. Mangojuice^talk 21:29, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ward Weaver III

Ward Weaver III (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) –

BLP violation. Article is only a coatrack for his criminal trial and conviction. The only sources cited are About.com, one book, and a an article calling the book cited unreliable. Does not satisfy WP:V in the least, but as it stands, the article is a blatant WP:BLP1E violation. - Kesh (talk) 18:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom.   jj137 (Talk) 19:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: This is not a BLP1E or a COATRACK violation, blatant or otherwise. Ward Weaver was the subject of many months of extensive coverage in numerous local, regional, and possibly national media outlets, not for a single event but for a complex string of events. The sourcing definitely needs some work, and I will work on that. The Tribune article does not call the entire validity of the book into question, rather covers disagreement about some of the details. -Pete (talk) 20:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I just added nine citations to the article's talk page, to be worked into the article as inline citations. Publishers include CNN, FOX News, Associated Press. Years of coverage span 2001–2007. Notable aspects include Weaver's attempts to fake insanity plea, FBI's failure to identify Weaver as a suspect, Tribune's role in identifying him, pattern of behavior in Weaver's family, show about Weaver and the crimes on Oxygen network, Weaver's repeated firing of attorneys and attempts to defend himself, cost of the investigation and trial to taxpayers, tie-in with history of death penalty in Oregon, lawsuit filed against Oregon City Police, etc. Happy Thanksgiving all, I'm off to dinner! -Pete (talk) 21:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
    • In other words, they're all about the crime and his actions during the trial, not a biography of the man: the definition of a BLP1E violation. If you want to create a separate article about the crime, feel free. But if this article claims to be about the man, when it's really about the crime itself. That's a straight-up violation. -- Kesh (talk) 00:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
      • The article begins with Weaver's birth in 1963, and covers events in 1967, 1981, 1982, 1993, 1995, 1996, an 1997 before getting to the beginning of Weaver's criminal activity involving Gaddis and Pond. Following the crime, the article discusses his approach to talking with the press, his trial and sentencing, and an event occuring in prison. The article is about the man, not the crime. -Pete (talk) 01:13, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletions. —Katr67 (talk) 23:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but reframe as comprehensive article about the case. I find these arguments about the true nature of an article about a criminal something of an angels on the head of a pin sidetrack. I also find it a bit bizarre that we're arguing about an attack article when the individual in question is convicted and serving a life sentence. But I agree that the criminal and victims should generally be in one single article. Thus, merge with the already-combined Miranda Gaddis and Ashley Pond article. In the absense of a sitewide guideline on the notability of criminals and/or victims of crime, this is probably the best we can do. Instead of pushing someone to "create a separate article", why not be constructive and attempt to fix this one? --Dhartung | Talk 04:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep obviously merge with the article about the victims. The question is merely what title to use, and at the moment we have no consistent practice. In this instance, there is no one preferred way in the references. The interest seems to be as much in his remarkably brazen conduct after the crime as in the crime itself, so using his name for the article title seems reasonable. Articles about people are necessarily about the things they did. the fact of being born is almost never interesting per se, nor is the education and personal life of almost anyone, unless they should have done something for which their education and personal life is worth knowing about. If the reason people are interested in them is because they are heads of government, that's a reason; if the reason people are interested is because they are notorious criminals, that's a reason--but in either case the article is normally about them. BLP was not intended to prevent articles about convicted (& confessed) murderers. Dhartung has it exactly right. I do not understand the reasoning of the nom.DGG (talk) 20:54, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: I did not formally !vote before. I believe the substantial issue behind BLP1E is notability; the situations where BLP1E is required are events where a person receives lots of minor press coverage due to their involvement in an event, thus appearing to establish notability, but is not really notable. To the degree that BLP1E appears to apply here, I believe that's a mere technicality. -Pete (talk) 01:13, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and merge per Dhartung et al. Notable enough for a single article, but not three. Bearian'sBooties (talk) 00:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and merge as per Dhartung et al. Notable enough for a single article, but not three. If it were possible in this vote then I'd delete the othe two now Victuallers (talk) 14:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: I have merged all content from the Pond/Gaddis article into the Weaver article. (I did not move the categories over, such as 2002 deaths, as I believe they would only serve to confuse.) At the conclusion of this AfD, it should be possible to simply delete redirect Miranda Gaddis and Ashley Pond without losing anything of significance. -Pete (talk) 00:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and merge: Most murderers (and their victims) are non-notable; Ward Weaver is an exception due to the extensive coverage of the case. That said, the article should probably be about the case, and pages on the victims (and on Ward) should redirect there. --EngineerScotty (talk) 17:27, 29 November 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.