Talk:Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

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[edit] McCanns visit to Brussels

I have removed, for the moment, "Two days later UK media reported that the Mccanns were on a high profile mission to Brussels to "pursuade MEPs to introduce an EU wide child abduction alert system" in an effort to spin headlines off the Portugese police requests.[1]" because I am not sure that the McCanns' activities which are not related to the Disappearance are sufficiently relevant to this article. May I have opinions, please? TerriersFan (talk) 00:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Just a further thought, the McCanns are going to get increasingly involved in their initiative on missing children in general and I am sure that there will be many more reports of their activities in this regard. I think that this initiative is being sufficiently reliably reported to be notable. Possibly it should be the subject of a separate article? There are many Ghits for Child abduction alert system, certainly enough for a page that could also link to AMBER Alert. A couple of recent links are here and here. I am not volunteering to write it, but I think its a runner if someone is interested. TerriersFan (talk) 00:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hey, hum, call me a pushover if you like but I have created page. TerriersFan (talk) 23:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edit by User:Haudcivitas

I should like to explain my reversion of the edit by User:Haudcivitas so that other editors can take a view. Essentially his/her addition has four parts:

  • McCanns being asked to go back for a reconstruction - already in the article, lower down.
  • McCanns feelings - attributed to an unnamed friend and therefore unreliable.
  • McCanns refusing to go back - not what the current sources say - the sources say that they haven't decided.
  • Brussels trip - I have an open mind as explained in detail above. TerriersFan (talk) 01:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree. They are POV and poorly sourced. The SKY news article used as a ref makes no mention of "spinning". That is entirely the editor's POV. HtD (talk) 08:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for picking this up; I had a heavy cold last night and wasn't as sharp as I could have been. TerriersFan (talk) 21:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The Mccanns make all their "statements" in this way, are they to be protected from analysis for that? The Mccanns have NOT gone back and here is a link which will show you that the Mccanns have officically refused to go back voluntarily as suspects (as if you didn't know already) [2]. You are anything but open minded and no doubt have been a charity fund contributor at some point. Or otherwise caught up in the professional spin of millions of pounds. HC.

You are misdirecting yourself if you believe that bad editing and characterisations, such as above and here, are likely to advance your case or win others round to your viewpoint. It is inaccurate to claim that the McCanns have refused to go back; all that the Fox source does is offer the unattributed views of 'friends'. Neither the views of friends nor the feelings of the McCanns can be included without a direct attribution. TerriersFan (talk) 03:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
"The Mccanns make all their "statements" in this way..."
No, they don't. They have an official spokesman, and only what he says or they say themselves directly to the media can be taken as being their official position, which is of course open to scrutiny. HtD (talk) 12:21, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Madeleine crying

This is news: "While we were having breakfast, Madeleine said: 'Mum, why didn't you come when we were crying last night?'," she said.

"Rachael Oldfield, had been in the adjoining flat - on the other side of Madeleine's wall - all evening and heard no crying." I bet the Spanish private detectives heard this for the first time from the Spanish TV. And any of the Oldfield heard nothing when she disappeared?? How thick must the walls be. The upstairs neighbour, an old lady, heard her crying.[1]

[edit] Metodo 3 allegations

I have removed the allegations about the Metodo 3 detectives because they are unrelated to either the disappearance itself or to their investigation of other child disappearances. HtD (talk) 19:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] the website latest blog

The mcanns are speaking about madeline in the past tense "she WAS a lovely girl..." not IS. It is worth pointing out and putting it in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.103.113.58 (talk) 20:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you paste a link to that page on the blog please? I can't find it. HtD (talk) 08:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article too long

Hi. I just tagged this article as being too long. It's over 100k and it's making edits, such as for cleaning up vandalism, load slowly. I pity anyone trying to load the page on dialup! I'm not a regular editor on this article, but is there a way we can trim this up or should it simply be split into sub-articles? —Ashanda (talk) 19:45, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the tag. One of the reasons it's so long is are the notes. We have tried to deal with that in the past by having a scrolling reflist, but this was vetoed by general WP consensus. This is a very complicated BLP that has already been split once. The detail is needed, and because there are so many individuals, there is a lot of it. Again, for BLP reasons it shouldn't be split, because it's important to have the whole context in one place. There are many longer articles on WP, and length is not a constraint as we are not a paper encyclopaedia. Harry the Dog WOOF 19:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
I have given thought from time to time on this. All the content is fully sourced and every sentence has been reviewed for accuracy and relevance, by multiple editors. Identifying sections for breakout is hampered by the article being highly factual, with most of the content relevant to the story and with little padding. However, we can start to make some thinning by moving the Confirmed sightings on 3 May and Reported sightings sections to a new page, Sightings following the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, leaving a reasonable summary in the main article. Indeed, the muse has just moved so I will create a user space version for consideration! TerriersFan (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
That was the one section I felt could be moved as well. Since all the sightings have been false alarms, while it is important to record that they happened, it doesn't need to be in the main article. Harry the Dog WOOF 15:12, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Though we assume the sightings were false alarms, and they probably were, several of them have not been explicitly discounted. I will distinguish between these in the draft article and post here when I think it is ready for prime time! TerriersFan (talk) 15:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
True. I guess what I meant is that they haven't led to a resolution of the case. Harry the Dog WOOF 16:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, the initial draft is ready at User:TerriersFan/Sightings following the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Now we have space, there is sourced analysis that can be added, as well as distinguishing between the discounted and undiscounted sightings, but this makes a start. I should like agreement to carry out the split, please. TerriersFan (talk) 17:38, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
That looks fine. I say go ahead. Pawnkingthree (talk) 18:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Ditto. Harry the Dog WOOF 18:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Done; saving 15.4Kb. TerriersFan (talk) 19:39, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits

The edits today have been a bit confusing. On the one hand we have the removal of remarks made by Pamela Fenn. This I agree with, as the reference no longer appears on the Daily Express website and cannot be verified. I'm not even sure the Express was a reliable source to begin with. On the other, there's extra wording added into the section of the leaking of interviews. The addition "that statement would have come from the Portugese police" does not appear in the BBC reference and sounds like POV. I think the original wording was better. Pawnkingthree (talk) 12:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I see that the addition you were concerned with was, rightly in my view, reverted by HTDD and it should stay out. I have researched the Pamela Fenn remarks and found this. For this reason, it should also stay out. The question of the source being unavailable is, however, not a good reason for exclusion. References break all the time when sources take material off their websites and the Wikipedia practice is that we don't remove material for that reason. TerriersFan (talk) 20:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)