Wikinews:Deletion requests/Archives/Passed Archive 3

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July 17

Israeli PM assassin Yigal Amir on open-ended hunger strike

Disputed, no real news interest Shambler 21:57, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Sounded newsworthy to me. What part(s) of it is in dispute? --RossKoepke^Talk 00:12, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Keep. It appears to be news. -- IlyaHaykinson 00:15, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Fascinating, imagine getting married under those circumstances.-Edbrown05

British police name two more bombers

Copyvio -- didn't copy the whole article, just parts. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:10, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete if it doesn't get re-written. Dan100 (Talk) 16:18, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Army makes controlled explosion of suspect package in Leeds, England

Abandoned, disputed --Chiacomo (talk) 05:05, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Borderline speedy - just a fraction more context given beyond the headline, but no real content and no sources. Dan100 (Talk) 16:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

July 14

San Jose, California

Abandoned portal (image caused error) - Amgine/^talk 20:02, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

• Keep It's not abandoned. -- Davodd | Talk 02:31, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
• Comment, one article in the last few months looks pretty abandoned to me. But it was from July 4, so I guess it's not quite abandoned... Dan100 (Talk) 11:22, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

July 8

Investigators of 2005 London bombings "find timing device"

We don't do rumours, and the rumour is untrue to boot. Dan100 (Talk) 8 July 2005 07:54 (UTC)

• If it's a rumour, it's one with three sources, a named person stating that a discovery has been made, and quotes. Uncle G 8 July 2005 10:34 (UTC)
  • Make that five sources. Uncle G 8 July 2005 18:29 (UTC)
  • Make that seven sources. Uncle G 8 July 2005 18:29 (UTC)
• Comment. It's impact that is newsworthy - not the rumor itself. Unsubstantiated conjecture statements (rumors) are newsworthy if they affect newsworthy action or incident. For instance stock prices plummeting on rumors of a corporate takeover are newsworthy. Likewise, police raiding a house on rumored drug trafficking is newsworthy. -- Davodd | Talk 8 July 2005 12:38 (UTC)
  • That is predicated upon the supposition that this is a rumour. As things stand, we only have Dan100's assertion for that. Whereas on the other hand we have the NYT, ABC News, CNN, and The Guardian all stating as fact that timing devices have been found. (The Guardian even cites its source by name.) Uncle G 8 July 2005 18:29 (UTC)
• I disagree. My initial reaction to the article was the same, I suggested it should be deleted. But there is some support for it as the sources would indicate. Since the focus of the article has changed to the finding of the timing devices, perhaps a better solution would be to rewrite the article and bring up the "unexploded bomb" rumour as a post-script. --Wolfrider 8 July 2005 12:43 (UTC)
• Comment: Uncle G has substantially re-written the article away from two UXBs being found to timer fragments being found, which is a bit odd. I'd have started a new article.
  • Doing that would have been a bit odd, given that this is the same story as it was right from the start. The reporting of the finding of the timing devices has been in the article right from the start. Uncle G 9 July 2005 14:18 (UTC)
• When I listed the article for deletion, it was discussing two rumoured UXBs. I don't know what ABC et al were hearing or who from, but at the London press conference yesterday the police were categorical that no unexploded bombs had been discovered. The confusion arose over a controlled explosion on two packages which turned out to be harmless. Dan100 (Talk) 9 July 2005 11:01 (UTC)
  • No, it wasn't. When you listed the article for deletion, it discussed the discovery of the timing devices in the third paragraph. Uncle G 9 July 2005 14:18 (UTC)
• It's interesting to de-construct this, but the bottom line is that the article is very, very wrong, and still needs to be deleted.

  The police have stated that "there is no evidence to suggest that the attacks were the result of suicide bombings although this cannot be ruled out" [1], and they've been saying that since quite early on.

  Now, pretty obviously, if the bombs weren't set off manually they were on a timer - radio signals cannot penetrate the deep line tunnels.

  The rumour about a timer being found seems to stem from something on CNN television. The other sources Uncle G has listed which mention timer fragments refer back to this (there aren't "five sources", as Uncle G states, just different news services repeating the same thing.) Interestingly, cnn.com is running an AP article which quotes an "unnamed US official", whom the London police decline to comment about. I'll discuss this with the Guardian quote in a moment.

  The NYT correctly stated the implication that if not detonated manually, timers were used - rather than stating that parts of timers had been found.

  Now, the Guardian quote, in particular, is a bit weird. Why would a former head of intelligence in the US know more about the investigation, than the British investigators themselves? (Same things goes for the "unnamed US official" in AP.) He also quotes that two UXBs had been found - now known to be false (as correctly reported by ABC), which throws everything he said into doubt. (The Guardian is well known for poor fact checking; I suspect this will become yet another example.)

  Changing tack slightly, the ABC story states that "unammed officials" had found the body of one of the bombers - well pretty obviously, that's not going to happen. Today the papers are talking about "struggling to find enough DNA of the bus bomber".

  (As an aside, yesterday people were talking about a man rummaging in bag repeatedly - except he was standing on the lower deck, and the bomb detonated at the rear of the upper deck.)

  Now, just because another news service is reporting something, doesn't make it news-worthy, and doesn't mean we should just repeat it like automatons. The whole point of Wikinews was to allow us - anyone - to do a better job than the mainstream media. Part of that being better means better fact checking, and not running speculation with very shaky evidence.

  We should be aiming to tell the news of what has happened - whatever it is - with the highest possible standards of truth and accuracy. Dan100 (Talk) 9 July 2005 11:57 (UTC)

• Davodd mentions Unsubstantiated conjecture statements (rumors) are newsworthy if they affect newsworthy action or incident. Maybe so, if they do indeed have such an effect - then we can report that effect, which is newsorthy, mentioning the rumour as the cause of the effect. However in this particular case the rumour doesn't seem to have had any effect at all. Dan100 (Talk) 9 July 2005 12:11 (UTC)
• The deletion discussion so far has missed one critical issue. Just because an official agency withdraws or changes a story does not mean that a story with multiple independent sources should be deleted. The story may need to be changed to read 'story of unexploded bombs in dispute' but it should not just be pulled because one government agency doesnt want it there. It seems obvious to me that Scotland Yard has a very strong motive for pulling the story even if it were true. They are in the midst of an investigation and may not want to tip off the terrorists as to their lines of inquiry. If this was the case, the discussion here should more honestly be one of censorship and not newsworthiness. While Wikinews should try to present accurate stories, I think one of the whole points of Wikinews is to have access to stories that may have been censored or filtered out by the main stream media. This needs to be balanced against collective human security. However, in this case, I think people have a right to know in general how the investigation is going. I can understand specific locations or names being protected, but if a story has already been in circulation for a few days, any remaining terrorists have undoubtedly heard it already, and there seems to be no need to subject ourselves to censorship from one perhaps overcautious government agency without adequate and honest discussion. It also seems to me that much of this discussion seems to be driven by one or 2 users and that there needs to be more consensus than that before a story is pulled Johan 9 July 2005 18:29 UTC.

Passed 3 - 1, - 24.85.70.132 03:23, 13 July 2005 (UTC)