Talk:Murders of Nireah Johnson and Brandie Coleman

Notability

It might be worth giving reasons why this case is particularly notable. Was it the first known case of such a murder? Was it (or those involved) really high profile? It may be deleted based on WP:BLP otherwise. violet/riga (t) 18:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

What does Notability Mean?

This is the third time that an article I've written as part of a project to document anti-LGBT hate crimes has been threatened with deletion because of notability. I've read the notability guidelines and I haven't seen anything there that says it must be the first of its kind, etc.

My goal has simply been to document these cases, because there are so many I know of that haven't been documented here.

The criteria I've been cited by a few who have objected to these articles could be used to disqualify most of the hate crimes that have been documented at Violence against LGBT people.

Does notability mean that it must be the first case of its kind? Does it mean that it must involve a high profile victim? Because many of the cases I'm researching didn't get widespread coverage. (In many cases because the victims were not necessarily as palatable to the public as, say, a Matthew Sheppard or Brandon Teena. In fact, of the the articles that I've submitted that have been challenged thusly have involved LGBT people of color -- whose deaths, no matter the circumstances, would never receive widespread coverage anyway.

I am beginning to think that there's some hostility on Wikipedia to having these cases documented here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TerranceDC (talk • contribs) 20:11, August 20, 2007 (UTC).

No, some people just get very het up about notability here. We get so many trivial articles some people don't think before hitting the prod button, including me sometimes. This article has ten separate references, so anyone who claims this is non-notable is wrong. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, having 10 news references is not a guarantee of notability by any definition of "notability". I can find dozens of news articles about the recent crazy bomb threat at the Montreal consulate of the U.S. Does that make this event notable? No: notability is not temporary. The sources must establish a lasting notability (e.g. if the murder is discussed in prominent books or scholarly articles about LBGT hate crimes). Otherwise, it's just a run-of-the-mill shock news murder. Circeus 23:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

An example of a better source to mention might be [1], which apparently discusses it at some point. Circeus 00:08, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't cite that as a reference, because it was from an advocacy group, and I thought that perhaps it would get me into trouble regarding neutrality. I'd already been advised to remove a link from another article, because of concern about the neutrality of that link. So, I figured linking to a document from an advocacy group like GPAC was dicey at best. Of course, since I didn't use it here I'm told that I should have. If I had used it, I might have been told that I shouldn't have. TerranceDC 03:55, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

There's no need to discuss it further. I've decided it was a mistake to try to contribute to Wikipedia. None of the people whose cases I've been researching or writing about will pass the notability test. None of them received widespread mainstream coverage. None of them were the first case of their kind. None of them inspired major protests. None of them cause new laws to be passed. Nothing much was heard of them in death because they were not people anyone thought worthy of note in life. I believed what happened to them was worth noting somewhere, but apparently not here.

The great irony is that none of these people can be notable in death because they weren't notable in life for anyone to care enough to protest, pass legislation, or pay much attention to them in the media. These are not people who would be the subject of, say, hourly updates on CNN or CourtTV if they went missing.

The reason I even tried to add their stories here ws because I came across the Hate crimes against LGBT people category on Wikipedia while researching a piece about hate crimes to publish elsewhere. I noticed that there were a number of cases I knew of and had written of myself that weren't there. In fact, to look at that category, you'd get the impression that these crimes are rare and happen very few people. But since I started this project, I've gotten potential cases numbering in the hundreds.

I am beginning work on establishing a freestanding wiki to house their stories. The other great irony is that if I'm successful that project might be "notable" enough for at least a brief mention here. Maybe. TerranceDC 02:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Do we have a list of hate crimes against LGBT people? That is an excellent way to collate the basic information about most cases. The individual cases might not necessarily be all notable, but their sum most certainly is. Circeus 17:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Article subject

The title of this article is misleading, in that the article covers the murder of the subject, and is not a biography of either the victim or the offender. As to the murder itself, it doesn't seem particularly notable. Cheers Kevin 04:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Cheers. Funny, that. Is it possible for me to delete the articles I've contributed to Wikipedia thus far, rather than wait for someone else to do it? TerranceDC 05:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Who is more notable here? Moore or Johnson? We can agree Johnson wasn't the problem nor are people like him. That leaves Moore whose behavior might be notable because of the extent of his over reaction. If we want to prevent things like this from happening again, who do we study? Moore. I do think it's unfortunate that Moore seems more notable. I agree with Kevin that the title is in need of review. Nanabozho 05:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

TerranceDC is also correct in that the notability guidelines are highly subjective, and in some cases have a one size fits all approach that does not always work. Almost every murder (in the 1st world at least) is likely to be covered by the media, sufficient to pass the multiple, non-trivial coverage guideline. So we need to ask: what about this particular murder distinguishes it from the others?. I suspect in most cases there would be little to distinguish it. Or we go the other way and have detailed coverage of them all. There would end up being an awful lot though.

I completely understand TerranceDC's frustration, having spent a great deal of time only to find out that several editors feel the subjects are not notable. It seems clear that the guidelines do not always reflect the community view. See Wikipedia talk:Notability for years of debate on the issue.

To TerranceDC, sorry for sounding so blunt in my original note. It wasn't quite what I intended. Kevin 05:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Go Ahead and Delete Them All

I am no longer an active contributor to Wikipedia. I haven't been for years. I stopped adding hate crimes cases to Wikipedia when I realized the notability requirement negated the very cases I wanted to highlight. (I should note that the Nizah Morris article slated for deletion appeared on the front page of Wikipedia in the "Did You Know" box, FWIW -- which is apparently not much.) Instead I established my own freestanding site, where I can post and update entries on these crimes. I'd mention the site here, but that would be self-promotion.

I started this project because I was writing a post about hate crimes, and went to Wikipedia as a resource. I realized that of the cases I wanted to cover, only a handful were entered into Wikipedia. To look at Wikipedia, one would think that hate crimes are I set about trying to change that and -- as you've no doubt seen -- got pretty far before I started running into the notability guidelines, and started seeing entries removed. I quickly abandoned Wikipedia for reasons I'll spell out below.

These are cases that are virtually unknown, because they never made major headlines, catalyzed public response, caused major legislation, etc. The names and faces of the victims are unknown to most people. News articles about the crimes committed against them never got reported beyond local media, and have long since been buried behind the paywalls of local news outlets. I used my research skills and resources to get behind those paywalls, to try and create a publicly accessible record of their stories. Once I got started, I found that researching one story would often lead me to one or more that I added to a long backlog of stories I've yet to research. I'll never get to them all, but I will record as many as I can.

Occasionally, I will get an email from friends and family of the victims, thanking me for me for making a public record of their love-one's stories, and for ensuring that they were not forgotten. But beyond that, they are forgotten. And Wikipedia's notability guidelines suggest they should be.

So, no amount of editing is going to make them worthy of note -- certainly not enough to save them from deletion.

At this point, it looks like just about every contribution I've made to Wikipedia is slated for deletion. So be it. I've already preserved them elsewhere, and recorded many, many more that I never bothered trying to to enter into Wikipedia, because I'd learned my lesson at that point.

I've long since learned that Wikipedia is useless to me in the work I want to do. Its limitations make it so. It is useless to me as a resource, as it is unlikely to contain information about the kinds of cases I want to record, in order to make them accessible beyond the paywalls of local media archives, and also to give some inkling of the long history of hate crimes, the regularity with which they occur, and the diversity of the victims.

In that sense, I guess I believe they are worthy of note. But they will never notable enough for Wikipedia. So, delete them all.

TerranceDC (talk) 15:29, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

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