Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Criminal Biography

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[edit] Confidence scams

I set up the template Confidence Tricks for confidence scam related webpages. I figure we should probably do the same for other related crimes like Serial Killers, Bank robbers, Hackers, etc. Remember 21:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox title

I feel that the title "convicted criminal" should be inside the box instead of outside of it, but I do not know how to make this change. any code-savvy wikipedians can help? the box is at Template:Infobox Criminal. Wooyi 22:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Task forces

Here is a suggestion as to the design (largely borrowed from WikiProject Military history) regarding adding related projects in the place of "task forces" as well as additional features for {{WP Crime}}. MadMax 08:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

{{WPMILHIST
|class=
|auto=
|small=
|portal= 
|A-Class= 
|peer-review= 
|old-peer-review= 
|collaboration-candidate=
|current-collaboration=
|past-collaboration=
|attention= 
|needs-infobox=
<!-- B-Class parameters -->
|B-Class-1=
|B-Class-2=
|B-Class-3=
|B-Class-4=
|B-Class-5=
<!-- Task force parameters -->
|Australian-crime= 
|Australian-law= 
|British-crime= 
|Canadian-law= 
|Irish-Republican-Army= 
|Law= 
|Law-enforcement= 
|Terrorism= 
|Terrorism-and-counter-terrorism= 
}}

[edit] Merge proposal

• A proposal to merge the articles Street gangs and Gangster (which has been proposed to merge with Gang) has been suggested. MadMax 19:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
• The proposal to merge the articles U.S. Mafia Families and Crime family has been made. MadMax 21:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Emily Brogan

The article Emily Brogan, a member of the Provisional IRA, has been tagged as non-notible and may be in danger of being deleted in the near future. MadMax 21:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• I tried to find it in google but couldn't, dont know why. Wooyi 21:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• No luck finding it myself, although I left a note at WikiProject Irish Republican Army to see if can can dig anything up. MadMax 05:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Probably she is not a leader of IRA, but if she is notable the IRA project editors would come up with some printed reference. Wooyi 23:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart's mug shot Image:Marthastewart.jpg is being accused as a hoax, can someone please verify it? Wooyi 22:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

My comments on Wooyi's talk page:

Yes, I did remove the Stewart mug shot and, yes, I do believe it is a hoax. First of all, the image was taken from a blog...bad practice. Second, The image clearly has been doctored...it looks to me like Stewart's head has been copied from another image and pasted into a mug shot image. Third, I believe Stewart's mug shot was taken in June of 2003...the date in this image looks to be 6-21-02. I find it very inappropriate to take a "mug shot" which is most likely a hoax from somebody's blog and than upload it to a Wikipedia article and act as though it is the real thing. --MatthewUND^(talk) 22:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Wooyi, I think the main problem seems to be the picture's source which is a known hoax journal which suggests the photo may have been altered with that purpose in mind. Hpwever, while I've found an additional website which uses the photo (see [1]), I'm unable to find any other photos related to her arrest including on major celebrity mugshot websites such as Mugshots.com. I have found an alternative photo of Martha Stewart in a prison jumpsuit [2], however, I'm unsure weither this is a legitimate photo or if it's in the public domain. MadMax 06:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't feel Wooyi is entirtly at fault. It certainly is very convincing at first glance and there is no indication it was altered on the original website (such as a disclaimer or copyright notice). However, while I would obviously agree the photo's reliability in question, it should be importent to take in consideration that it was an honest mistake. MadMax 06:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks MadMax. I will be careful about images in future. It was my careless mistake. Wooyi 05:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Al Capone

The article Al Capone, which is within our project, was under persistent vandalism and an administrator has agreed to semi-protect it. Wooyi 22:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Albert Fish

Albert Fish has been rated as "Good Article". It was created (or developed) by new member User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ). Thanks Mr. Norton! Wooyi 01:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposals

A series of articles have been proposed to be merged at WikiProject British crime. MadMax 02:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Novi Ligure Homicide

An article that is related to our project Novi Ligure Homicide is being proposed for deletion, you are welcomed to discuss it here. Thank you! Wooyi 02:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions

Here are several questions from the unofficial WikiProject Organized crime which have not been answered.

for additional questions see the project talk page.

1. I've reformatted the Los Angeles Mafia, however it still needs a lot of work from more knowledgeable editors. Would a more appropriate title be Los Angeles crime family or even the more specific Dragna crime family ? MadMax 11:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
2. I've been working on some of the lesser known Jewish mobsters of the 1930s, mostly associates of Lansky and Buchalter, and I've come across a discrepancy between a claim in a published book "Murder Inc." by Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feir which claims Philip Kovolick was killed in 1949 after shaking down New York bookies in a protection racket and a New York Times article which reports his body was found sealed in a drum in Hallandale, Florida after fleeing from an indictment to appear before a Manhattan grand jury. Any thoughts ? MadMax 19:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
3. I've been trying to add additional information to Vincenzo Aloi, another article created by User:TheChin, since it was previously redirected as a stub to the Colombo crime family. However, the article doesn't clarify weither this is Vincenzo "Buster" Aloi or his son. I'm assuming its his son, given the 1923 birthdate, however the article give a much higher position within the Colombo family as consigliere (when he is stated as a New Jersey capo in 1988 [3]) ? MadMax 14:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
4. The date of death for Abraham Friedman differs between AmericanMafia.com and April 28 according to Albert Fried's The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America (see [4]). MadMax 12:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
5. I recently ran across the article Arthur Adler, however is this the same man who was killed by Sam DeStefano ? MadMax 14:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
6. There doesn't seem to be any mention of Genovese mobsters Louis DeSorbo and John Matarazzo, online or otherwise. If anyone can provide sources, please do so. MadMax 21:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
7. In trying to complete the somewhat inconsistant liniage of policy operators in New York, orgininaly begun by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), I'm unable to find who succeeded Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno following his imprisonment in 1986. Assuming he retained control Harlem's number rackets after becoming head of the Genovese crime family during the 1970s, would it be logical to assume Vincent Gigante came into control following Salerno's downfall ? MadMax 21:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for deletion

• The following articles have been proposed for deletion:

1. Ebony Simpson (kept), an Australian murder victim nominated on the basis of being a non notable/memorial entry. Interestingly enough, it has been proposed by one editor to merge the victim to the crime, which has apparently been becoming common practice.
2. CrimeLine (deleted) - proposed as a non notable/unverified organization.
3. Dean Roberts (criminal) (deleted; currently under deletion review) - proposed as a non notible drug dealer
4. Michael Tyrell (drug trafficker) - proposed as a non notable criminal

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by MadMax (talk • contribs) 04:45, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Flag question

An editor who edited Stanley Williams removed the flags in infobox and pointed out the problem here. Let's discuss here whether if we remove all flags from criminal biography infobox or keep them. Wooyi 20:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer here, Wooyi. I think the most relevant issues from my perspective are that the flags are visually "busy" and distracting, and also, to borrow from WP:FLAGS, "Flags place unequal emphasis on location, especially in infoboxes. With a flag, Paul McCartney is English . Without a flag, he is an English rock singer and songwriter who was in The Beatles." I don't think that removing flags from every infobox on Wikipedia is a good idea, but for criminal biographies, it may make sense. Most of these folks aren't politicians, and their notability has little or nothing to do with nationality. If most pictures are worth a thousand words, these flag icons are worth at least several dozen words ;-) and it seems like overemphasis on the trivial for criminal bios. — coelacan — 01:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• I've previously discussed this issue with Longhair and, while I do believe this is an issue which should be resolved, it could be useful for criminals who have died outside their native countries (as opposed to being a bit repetitive to keep for those who have died in their own respective countries). MadMax 02:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• Well, the infoboxes should state the location of death. That info should be easily available for anyone who's looking for it, but I don't think it's exactly hidden in a flag-less infobox. Is location of death so important that there should be a colorful eye-catching icon there that demands a little piece of every reader's time? — coelacan — 06:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• I haven't really any opinion on the matter one way or the other, however if there is no real practical defined use outside of lists and such, I'm not sure I understand why the flag templates exist at all if their use is discouraged on biographies. MadMax 04:19, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• Well, keep in mind that while I endorse what WP:FLAGS has to say, it's just an essay, not policy. The use of the templates is discouraged by many but not by everyone. I can see how it's useful in Angela Merkel's biography. Her "Germanness" is a major component of her notability. Richard Müller's, less so. I wouldn't draw unwarrented attention to Müller's nationality with a flag icon, although I can see why Merkel's infobox has one. — coelacan — 08:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of notability guidelines

According to discussion regarding the deletion of drug trafficker Michael Tyrell, Smerdis of Tlön mentioned there has been some discussion at Wikipedia:Notability (news) regarding the notability and sourcing policies of criminal biographies. Apparently there has been a growing opinion that articles deemed "non-notable" are to be deleted, however this is the first I've heard of it. Does anyone know anything more about this ? MadMax 02:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

It is very hard to draw a line, and the proposed Wikipedia:Notability (news) was not adopted as a policy. WP:BIO's primary criteron says for a person to be notable it must be subject of secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject and it also says mentioning of the person in sources cannot be incidental. The following special criterion did not cover criminals, however. I guess that a notable criminal should be a primary subject of articles in at least two reliable newspapers. I also think that non-notable local newspapers probably don't count. For the case of Michael Tyrell (drug trafficker) it looks like it has been covered as main subject in articles on some national newspapers that have entries on wikipedia themselves, so I guess it should be kept. Wooyi 04:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to follow up a sec, we're currently looking at merging WP:N and WP:INCLUSION into a revised general guideline on notability. The main standard in WP:INCLUSION is that an article should include more than one independently published verifiable reference and the references should not all be published simultaneously (eg it shouldn't be three different papers reporting on the same wire story on the same day). In the specific case of Michael Tyrell's article above, the references included appear to span a two year time frame, so my guess is it would pass both WP:INCLUSION and WP:N. Dugwiki 17:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem, as I see it, is that it's a fairly trivial achievement for a criminal to meet WP:BIO. Just about any homicide or major robbery in a city with two media outlets would appear to make it; if it's covered in both, this criminal deserves an encyclopedia article under that standard. This is why I tend to feel that criminals need to have some kind of evidence of lasting interest in order to be worthy of an article. What should those criteria be? Idunno. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

To reply to Smerdis above, note that both WP:INCLUSION and WP:N recommend that the references be spread out a little over time. Multiple newspapers publishing the same story on the same day or two day period wouldn't count. That's intended to weed out some of the "one shot" crime stories and such. It won't weed out every local crime story, but it does catch a number of them. Dugwiki 16:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, it does. It may, though, still make every criminal who goes to trial or receives a sentence a potential encyclopedia subject. This will happen some time after the crime and the arrest, and usually will be covered independently by the local media. This, too, sets the bar too low, at least in my opinion. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the bar is intentionally low. It's set low since a low requirement is all that appears currently likely to receive strong consensus. Articles about cases which minimally pass WP:N and WP:INCLUSION might still not be considered good articles for Wikipedia by all editors, and such controversial cases are going to require more detailed debate beyond the scope of the general guidelines. So yes, the guidelines err on the side of over-inclusion. Dugwiki 17:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Create Category:Crimes by year ?

While categorizing an article about a particular crime, I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a category for the year of the crime. Almost everything in Wikipedia has a category indicating the associated year of the event/birth/creation/etc, so it looks like an oversight that nobody has created Category:Crimes by year or something similar.

I was pointed to your project as the one that would likely have the most significant influence on maintaining such a category, so what do you guys think? Currently the only option for categorizing crimes by year is to put them under the "year by country" category, such as Category:1977 in the United States for a US crime that occured in 1977. It might be useful as a way to study crimes in a similar historical context, and would be a consistent category tag that basically any crime event article could include. Dugwiki 21:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• Seems like a logical category to create. MadMax 04:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• I agree that creating a "crimes by year" category is reasonable and necessary, go for it. Wooyi 03:55, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive feedback. I'll probably start on it today or tomorrow using a template system similar to Category:Works by year.

Ok, I've set up the basic category templates for Category:Crimes by year. It should be fairly straightforward. Each yearly category uses Template:crimesyr for its format. Feel free to adjust the templates I set up as desired.

I also in the descriptions said that the categories should use the year of occurence of the crime, and for articles about a serial set of crimes use the year of the first crime in the series. (Otherwise you'll end up with a bunch of categories for crimes that span a number of years).

The next step is simply to start populating the categories and creating new categories using the templates as needed. I'll start doing some of that, but please feel free to add them as you find articles with missing crime years.

Finally, I also created Category:Year of crime missing to house articles which currently do not include the year the crime occured. This is similar to Category:Year of birth missing and is meant to be a temporary placeholder until the year can be included in the article. Dugwiki 19:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FYI on alleged crimes

In the course of the above categorization of Category:Crimes by year I've noticed a few articles which allege that someone committed a crime, such as talking about the subject being sued or indicted, but for which no conviction resulted. I just wanted to make a general caution that unless an article has verifiable information that the subject was convicted of a crime they should not be labelled with "crime" categories. Otherwise you're basically calling that person or company "criminals" without providing actual verified information that they are officially criminals.

That's not to say there aren't alternatives. For example, Category:Scandals can be used for articles about people or companies who receive negative public attention for being accused of committing a crime, regardless of whether or not they receive a conviction. I would recommend using that category for public allegations, and reserving "criminal" categories for people and organizations who are legally considered criminals. Dugwiki 21:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Crimes by year and Category:Criminals similarities

I noticed in the course of populating Category:Crimes by year that a lot of the articles involving specific crimes are actually biographical articles about the associated criminals. Thus many of the "crimes" articles appear instead under Category:Criminals. That's not a problem, per se, but it does point out that a good place to look for articles to populate Category:Crimes by year is Category:Criminals. Dugwiki 17:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lewis Libby controversy

Some editors repeatedly tried to eliminate the "charge" and "penalty" row from the infobox in the article Lewis Libby, an article in the scope of the project. Please take a look at it and express your opinion here. Thanks! Wooyi 19:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)