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Template:Did you know nominations/Buffalo police shoving incident

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 11:04, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

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Buffalo police shoving incident

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Created by Fuzheado (talk), Starship.paint (talk), Leaky.Solar (talk), and Fram (talk). Nominated by Starship.paint (talk) at 03:16, 14 June 2020 (UTC).

  • starting review, first thing i want to check is eligibility since this was created from a redirect Mujinga (talk) 19:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
  • So this article was created 9 June with this edit of 1820 characters (6,304 bytes) taken from George Floyd protests in New York (state)#Niagara Square police violence incident. On my count, article is currently 8522 characters (26,567 bytes) so unfortunately I don't think this qualifies for DYK, although I'm happy to be proved wrong since I'd like this article to be on the mainpage. Mujinga (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @Mujinga: - thanks for taking this up. 1,500 characters is actually the minimum needed - not a maximum. Does that address your concern? Please continue to ping me. Cheers. starship.paint (talk) 12:49, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Hi @Starship.paint: what I'm saying is that on my calculations the article was begun with text from another article and therefore would need to have been expanded fivefold from the begin point of 1820 characters. I'm drawing on rule 1b: "Former redirects, stubs, disambiguation pages, and other pages in which the prose portion has been expanded fivefold or more within the past seven days are also acceptable as "new" articles. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles." Mujinga (talk) 16:45, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
    Will expand and ping you. starship.paint (talk) 02:40, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
  • hi @Starship.paint: so i checked using User:Dr pda/prosesize.js and i get 1781 bytes originally then 9016 bytes as of this edit so that makes it long enough now (it's over the required 8905) but i'm not sure if the eligibility criteria are being met, since it hasn't been expanded fivefold in the last 7 days. I'll check at Wikipedia talk:Did you know then continue the review if appropriate. Mujinga (talk) 17:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @Mujinga: The 7-day rule doesn't apply here. Many times we ask nominators to improve articles during the course of the review, and sometimes they even add other articles that have just been created during the review process. You pointed out that the article must be 5x longer than the part which was copied. If it now meets this criteria, you can go ahead and do the review. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 17:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • much obliged Yoninah Mujinga (talk) 17:51, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Mujinga, Yoninah, I don't believe that a 5x expansion of the copied material is necessary, because the copied material itself was new (written June 5 and 6, and copied June 9). Per WP:DYKSG#A5: New text seven days old or less can only count toward the 1500 character minimum in one article; if it is duplicated in other nominated new articles, it is ignored for the purpose of character count. (It it had been over seven days old, then the expansion would be required.) So in this case, the copied characters, being duplicated from from George Floyd protests in New York (state)#Niagara Square police violence incident in Buffalo police shoving incident are excluded from the total count of the latter, but that total count of the rest of the article just needs to hit the 1500 minimum. At this point, it's large enough regardless of the counting method, but had it not been expanded, it would still be long enough. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:08, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • It is honestly doing my head in trying to work out how WP:DYKSG#A4 and WP:DYKSG#A5 interact. At least we are all agreed on this nomination being OK.Mujinga (talk) 13:29, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited: Yes
  • Interesting: Yes
  • Other problems: No - The source is online and good but needs to be on the relevant sentences, which I would say are "By June 4, 11:05 p.m., the two officers who had pushed Gugino were suspended without pay, with the Buffalo police chief ordering for an investigation of the incident." and "On June 6, officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski were charged with second-degree assault, a felony"
QPQ: Done.

Overall: Earwig throwing up some stuff but it's direct quotations and the Trump tweet so no copyvio. Since there are pics, do you want to add one? Just a thought. As another comment, I find it a bit jarring that some quotations are wikilinked eg "serious but stable condition" → Medical state and "were simply following orders" and "simply doing their job" → Superior orders. This seems a bit like editorialisation, in contrast to "Black Lives Matter" → Black Lives Matter which seems like a straightforward link. Mujinga (talk) 18:42, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

  • I think MOS:LINKQUOTE applies here—links within quotations should be avoided if at all possible. In the cases noted above, there would seem to be neutrality issues, and neutrality is a requirement at DYK for both articles and hooks. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Thanks :) You said what I was trying to say but much better, I wasn't able to find the relevant part of the MOS! Mujinga (talk) 13:29, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Will ping when I get back to this! starship.paint (talk) 00:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

  • @Mujinga: - thanks for the review. I have removed links in quotes, except names (Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, OANN). Added quoted hook source to relevant sentences. starship.paint (talk) 13:46, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @Starship.paint: Great, we are nearly there now. I just noticed "75-year old" should be "75-year-old" in the hook and I'd still like the sentence "On June 6, officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski were charged with second-degree assault, a felony" to have the Acevedo reference on it, I know it's on the following sentence but it's good to have it on the specific claim about being charged with assault. Then the nomination will be good to go. Mujinga (talk) 20:05, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Cool, all done now Mujinga (talk) 08:15, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Hi, I just took a look at this article and find it lacks neutrality. As I said on a similar nomination, this is a very volatile issue and must be handled in a completely neutral manner. Stating in Wikipedia's voice that the Buffalo police department issued a false claim, or that President Donald Trump spread false and unfounded conspiracy theories in his response to the incident on Twitter, using news outlets as verification, is unacceptable. There has not been a criminal trial, but I don't see the word "allegedly" being used anywhere except in the headline of The Washington Post. (It is absolutely mandatory in the hook.) I think you can tone down the inflammatory language in the hook without losing clicks. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 22:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @Yoninah: I would love to see how you would insert "allegedly" into the hook Mujinga (talk) 22:44, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
  • starship.paint, Yoninah: With respect to the Trump comments: "Trump spread false and unfounded conspiracy theories in his response to the incident on Twitter" is perfectly fine because this is directly supported by numerous, high-quality sources that are properly cited. We do not need to water down "false and unfounded," nor should we include in-text attribution. The WP:WIKIVOICE section of WP:NPOV says, "Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice." The WP:EVALFRINGE section of WP:FRINGE says, "Claims that are uncontroversial and uncontested within reliable sources should be presented as simple statements of fact." The fact that Trump's comments were false is not seriously contested among the reliable sources. Neutralitytalk 14:38, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

ALT1 ... that the Buffalo, New York police shoving incident of a 75-year-old man resulted in two police officers being suspended and charged with assault? Source: NBC News

  • @Yoninah and Mujinga: - new hook above, and the two 'false/unfounded' statements in the article have been attributed to the organizations which deemed them false/unfounded. starship.paint (talk) 11:36, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Starship.paint. I have done some editing on the article to try to remove the POV tone, but more work needs to be done. I left a note on the talk page. Your ALT1 hook is not much of an improvement in terms of sensationalism. Let's talk again after you rewrite the lead and deal with that WP:UNDUE paragraph. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 13:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Yoninah - exactly which part of the hook is sensationalism? We have (a) the location of the event, (b) the title of the article which summarizes the event, (c) the victim, (d) the consequences suffered by the officers. That's all. starship.paint (talk) 14:11, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
  • The use of the word "assault" combined with "shoving incident" makes it sound like they did it. Yoninah (talk) 14:16, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @Yoninah: - they were only charged, not convicted. They did shove, but whether that counts as assault is questionable. We can point out that they denied the charge, as per the below. starship.paint (talk) 14:23, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

ALT2 ... that the Buffalo, New York police shoving incident of a 75-year-old man resulted in two police officers being suspended and charged with assault, to which they pleaded not guilty? Source: NBC News

Better. But the bolded link is saying they did it. Why "shoving" as opposed to "pushing"? Perhaps you could pipe the link. And I'm wondering why you keep suggesting a hook that describes the incident, rather than rework it to focus on another aspect of the case, such as the responses from the police and government? Yoninah (talk) 14:44, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
@Yoninah:, do a CTRL-F, there are 25 references in the article which use "shoving/shoved". Even Trump himself used "shoved". As to why I keep suggesting a hook that describes the incident, that's because the incident itself has proven to be interesting. Were it not interesting, a video of the incident would not have garnered 70 million videos. I simply don't believe that responses from the police or from the government are more interesting than the incident itself. Now, if the below will satisfy you: starship.paint (talk) 15:27, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

ALT3 ... that the Buffalo, New York police pushing incident of a 75-year-old man resulted in two police officers being suspended and charged with assault, to which they pleaded not guilty? Source: NBC News

The idea is good Yoninah, except that it misses the significance of the shove, which was that somebody was seriously injured. How about something like:

ALT0 is better than fine: Factual, neutral, interesting and hooky.Djflem (talk) 10:33, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Alt0b ... that in an alleged shoving incident, two Buffalo, New York police officers were suspended and charged with assault for pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground?
  • Per Mujinga's review, I think Alt0 is okay. I am proposing a variation for the promoter. --evrik (talk) 16:03, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, evrik, calling it a "police shoving incident", saying pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground, and using news sources to prove that this is what it happened, is unacceptable. They were charged with assault, but pleaded not guilty. This is clearly a case of trial by newspaper. Yoninah (talk) 16:10, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Ummm, I'm sorry, but I came by here to approve the hook. "police shoving incident" is part of the name. NBC news said, Two Buffalo officers charged with assault over police shoving 75-year-old man to ground --evrik (talk) 00:11, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Right. There's a problem with the page name. The whole article is tainted by POV reliance on media reports. It's too bad no one thinks to insert "alleged" anywhere, not least in the hook. Yoninah (talk) 00:23, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I added alleged to Alt0b. --evrik (talk) 15:12, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
The courts will determine if the shoving of the man was assault, but the FACT that he was shoved is not alleged.

ALT0? good to go. The hook and title are fine and certainly within Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. The backbone of Wikipedia is Wikipedia:Verifiability backed by Wikipedia:Reliable sources and this article and its hook are above and beyond compliance.Djflem (talk) 17:06, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

"Alleged" makes no sense in the given context. It's not an "alleged" shove, it's a demonstrable shove which millions of people have viewed on video. The allegation is that the shove constituted the crime of assault. So ALT0 simply makes no sense. Gatoclass (talk) 17:46, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
i think you must mean Alt0b here? Mujinga (talk) 19:11, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
No, absolutely not. I meant the original, which I assumed was ALT0, tho, the below Alt0c is fine: more or less same thing, different wording.Djflem (talk) 19:26, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Sorry for confusion Djflem, I was actually talking to Gatoclass, I think they must have meant ALT0b not ALT0, because there's no "alleged" in ALT0. Yes I still like ALT0 myself too, I'm also fine with ALT0c as a proposed compromise. Mujinga (talk) 22:18, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, succinct, verified by RS Djflem (talk) 19:34, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Seems ok, would it read better with "Buffalo Police Department officers" replacing "Buffalo, New York police officers"? The comma between Buffalo and New York trips me up a bit. Mujinga (talk) 22:22, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, ALT0c reads better to me. I don't mind the two Buffalo, New York, police officers. Yoninah (talk) 22:54, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Approving ALT0e. --evrik (talk) 20:31, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
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