Template:Did you know nominations/Murder of April Tinsley
- 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) 23:00, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
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Murder of April Tinsley[edit]
- ...
that the person who murdered April Tinsley in 1988 left four threatening notes, with used condoms and nude Polaroid pictures, on girls' bicycles and in a mailbox in 2004?Source: "In 2004, four notes were left at homes scattered across the Fort Wayne area. Three of the messages — written on lined yellow paper — were placed on young girls’s bicycles. An additional note was put in a mailbox. Three of the messages were inside plastic bags with used condoms and Polaroid pictures of the sender’s nude lower body."
- Reviewed: Charlottesville car attack
Created by FallingGravity (talk). Self-nominated at 16:44, 9 August 2018 (UTC).
New, long enough, within policy. QPQ done. I personally prefer to have repeat references in the lead, but the style of forcing the reader to search the body of the article for the references is acceptable, especially with a very short lead like this. However, the hook has to be changed: there hasn't been any court finding to confirm that the suspect was the person who left the four threatening messages. Just because the notes claim to be by the murderer, and police suspect that that's true, doesn't make it statable as a sourced fact. DNA ID can give high probability, not certainty; a confession could mean someone with mental illness who confesses falsely; and the case has not yet been legally decided. So I propose ALT1 as a hook:
- ALT1:
... that sixteen years after the 1988 murder of April Tinsley, four threatening notes containing used condoms were left on girls' bicycles and in a mailbox, presumably by the murderer?
- ALT1:
- Given that the notes themselves said that they were by Tinsley's murderer, and the DNA led to someone who confessed, I think that "presumed" is reasonable based on the sources, and shouldn't violate BLP. With ALT1 I would consider this ready. Boud (talk) 20:49, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- Here I meant the word "presumably" - it is sort of weaselly, but there are reliable sources for this presumption/assumption/claim, as a claim, not as a "legal fact", so it seems to me to survive the "is it weaselly?" question. On the other hand, I propose ALT2 as a safer hook from the BLP POV:
- ALT2:
... that sixteen years after the 1988 murder of April Tinsley, four threatening notes containing used condoms were found, leading to the 2018 arrest of a suspect based on DNA analysis?
- ALT2:
- Here I meant the word "presumably" - it is sort of weaselly, but there are reliable sources for this presumption/assumption/claim, as a claim, not as a "legal fact", so it seems to me to survive the "is it weaselly?" question. On the other hand, I propose ALT2 as a safer hook from the BLP POV:
I don't think we can say that the notes led to the suspect's arrest, since the police apparently already had his DNA from Tinsley's underwear. Anyways, in my experience at DYK, mentioning a suspected perpetrator is a big no-no. Perhaps the hook could just mention authorities believe the murder and the notes are connected?
- ALT3: ... that Indiana police believe that the person who murdered April Tinsley in 1988 also left four threatening notes with used condoms on girls' bicycles and in a mailbox in 2004?
FallingGravity 17:52, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
ALT3 looks fine to me. I took the liberty of removing the redundantly superfluous "same"; and replacing "law enforcement" by "police", because strictly speaking, wikt:law enforcement is uncountable and would require "law enforcement believes" and sounds like it should be replaced by "law enforcement officials believe", which is starting to sound like a complicated way of saying "police". Feel free to switch back to "law enforcement believes" (the uncountable noun requires "believes") or "law enforcement officials believe". The people who finally place DYK's in the queue or onto the main page sometimes make final adjustments anyway... Boud (talk) 18:49, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
