Talk:Pasquale Conte

RfC — the matter of Pasquale being deceased seems settled, but how do we source it!?

For starters, I'll admit I'm not well versed on mobsters or wiki editing policies, so this request may be misguided but in short:

In the last few years of edit history, claims have sprung up asserting that article subject is deceased. Sourcing isn't great on this article in general, so these claims of death are not only added without sources, but also the alleged date of death varies wildly. As of now, there's no semblance of consensus whatsoever. In my attempt to fill out other parts of the article, I came across a recent court case (28 Sep, 2022) where the parties involved are close relatives:

Plaintiff Anthony Conte, appearing pro se, commenced this action against Defendants Tapps Supermarket, Inc., Seven Seas Partners, Inc., Anthony C. Conte, Paul S. Conte, and Pasquale Conte, Jr., the Estate of Pasquale Conte, Sr., Anthony Bileddo, and Feder Kaszovitz LLP, for purportedly stealing/depriving Plaintiff of stock, ...

It can be reliably inferred from this that Pasquale is deceased^(recently?), no? I imagine Pasquale Conte, Sr. has to be him, and Pasquale junior is some descendant. Can this be construed into a valid citation somehow? There are no other credible sources, not even dubious sources, that have reported on this. I believe the article should state he's deceased, but I can't really support the edit with my original research on some tangentially related court case that happens to mention Pasquale's estate.

Ommar365 (talk) 09:14, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

You use the phrase the matter of Pasquale being deceased seems settled, but there is no previous discussion on this page, nor are there any links to pages where it might have occurred - did it occur elsewhere? Please see WP:RFCBEFORE. --Redrose64 🦌 (talk) 14:58, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I might not have been clear on the issue.

The page doesn’t have active discussions where various facts are contested — in fact most of it is written based on a handful of short news reports. This is evident in the sparse edit history, because it mostly contains edits and reverts, wherein an occasional edit provides new but unsourced details, then a revert follows because the edit was unsubstantiated or otherwise irrelevant.

So my RfC is more of a practical nature. I’m not asking for mediation on a hotly contested issue, rather I’m looking to solve the factual vacuum: people have an idea that he is deceased, as of yet it’s been unsourced, but doesn’t my reasoning above make a convincing case for his death? If it does, how would I go about inserting this fact into the page?

Using the court case would be a very circumstantial and questionable form of sourcing — and original research — but it’s still reasonable to assume a court filing would only refer to the “estate of Pasquel” if the article subject is dead. After all, there’s a short supply of any credible sources which is to be expected when writing the biographies and documenting lives of mobsters. Ommar365 (talk) 15:31, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Crap, I’m on mobile and can’t see my paragraphs so sorry if the above showed up as a wall of text. Ommar365 (talk) 15:33, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Ommar365. I added the date of death to the article, sourced to a newspaper obituary I found. I'm removing the RFC tag because (1) I think I resolved your reason for posting the RFC, and (2) the RFC template is mainly used when it's necessary to call in a bunch of editors to resolve an ongoing dispute, per Redrose64's link to WP:RFCBEFORE. In the future you could try just posting the issue as an ordinary Talk page sections and see if any other articles-editors respond, or you can go to WP:Help_desk and WP:Teahouse for general questions and assistance. (Teahouse more specialized toward welcoming newcomers and more basic questions.)

Regarding the court link you suggested, while that is a plausible source to cite, actually we usually avoid that kind of source (WP:PRIMARY SOURCES). It often takes legal expertise to properly interpret legal documents, the source implies he's dead rather than directly stating it, and it's not safe to assume a court will verify or correct submitted-false-claims if they are irrelevant to the final ruling. Newspapers can generally be relied upon to check that an obituary is basically legit before printing it, and can generally be relied upon to retract it if someone did dupe them into publishing a phony obituary. Alsee (talk) 04:51, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

P.S. If we didn't have a sufficiently good source to cite, then we'd just remain silent on the matter. It would be a gap in our coverage. As an "Encyclopedia anyone can edit" our first need is to filter out unreliable content, rather than aiming for "more complete but not reliable". Content must be Verifiable and Reliably sourced. Alsee (talk) 05:11, 27 December 2022 (UTC)