Talk:Suspect arrested in death of elephant in Kerala, India that ate explosive fruit

The lede needs to mention when the person was arrested.
•–• 06:14, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Review of revision 4568468 [Not ready]

Revision 4568468 of this article has been reviewed by Acagastya (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 06:24, 6 June 2020 (UTC). Copyright: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Newsworthiness: Not ready: Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. NPOV: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Comments by reviewer: Lede must say when the event happened Questions about the above? Ask. If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.

Revision 4568468 of this article has been reviewed by Acagastya (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 06:24, 6 June 2020 (UTC). Copyright: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Newsworthiness: Not ready: Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. NPOV: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Comments by reviewer: Lede must say when the event happened Questions about the above? Ask. If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.

Done --Ixfd64 (talk) 06:30, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Criticism of MSM

@Ixfd64: Thank you for taking efforts writing this story. Three days ago, I wanted to write about it; but there were no "new" developments. I stayed up all night that time, writing about this incident on my website. This is a story, I gave deep thought and attention to, invested a lot of time, and it just didn't work out. So I hope you understand how deeply I wanted this to be out there. I am glad you wrote about this. And I can look at these sources as well as the synthesis, and this is what I feel: (note, these are my thoughts, and others are not compelled to agree with them)

This article is just like how MSM reports it:

1. "...with the death of an elephant..." => "...with the death of a female elephant..." The "social media outrage, the cartoons [which I will speak about] made sure to highlight she was pregnant.
2. "...it ate fruit filled with firecrackers." => "...a fruit filled with firecrackers exploded in her mouth, damaging her jaw leading to her ultimate death." Details.
3. "The incident drew widespread condemnation as reports surfaced." => MSM never fails to report that, does it. There is widespread condemnation of almost everything today. How does the condemnation affect the newsworthiness of this story? My personal opinion: that line is redundant. A deeper dive: in his book Stop Reading the News, Rolf Dobelli says how current "junk food" type news reports new events as news -- even if they are not relevant or significant. If people didn't condemn, will that still affect the newsworthy status of the arrest of the suspect? If we aren't reporting the outrage, that information should definitely be at the bottom,.
4. "and is said to be a rubber tapper in his fourties" => Too close to the source. -- haven't checked the copyvios yet, but please avoid that.
5. Comments by Virat Kohli or Ratan Tata. MSM and quote-farming. I don't know why are their comments newsworthy, or even included. Yes, I have done this in the past. Over here, in this case; they are just giving opinions. They aren't the judge on this case. Nor are they the ones supposed to guard/protect/look after these animals, nor are they leaders of this district or state. In this case, they are just fellow humans -- and their comments don't add anything at all. What is does accomplish is including sentiments in the news by attributing -- effectively circumventing the NPOV, by attributing. There are far more people who have expressed similar sentiments, and we don't report them. Why?
6. "Some other Twitter users also posted artworks in memory of the elephant." => Again, a common MSM thing. Report unnecessary, unwarranted fact that has nothing to do with the story, which just serves a filler text. It is irrelevant. It is a spinoff. In the chapter "News obscure the big picture", Dobelli said, "These facts are usually no more than the consequences and side effects of deeper underlying causes".
7. "The firecracker-laden fruit was initially stated as a pineapple but later reported to be a coconut" => Again, MSM reports things that really add nothing to the incident itself. Does it really matter what the initial report said? Some reported facts cease to be facts. Even if it was a watermelon, it would not matter; it is not related to the arrest of this person. As far as death is concerned, the elephant ate fruit with explosives. It does not matter what the reports said -- say the newly discovered truth.
8. "most experts believe" => MSM really needs to stop being mind-readers.

Ixfd64, I would be glad if we didn't make the same mistakes the MSM makes. There might be other reviewers who would look at this story and not find these problems a barrier. But I hope you look at my reasoning and understand my POV. If you agree, it would be really great if you incorporate that in your writings. Other than this, it reads well. It is just that we ought to see that what is common in MSM may not be right.
•–• 07:49, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Acagastya: Thanks so much for taking the time to review my article so meticulously. I had initially decided not to write this article as the incident happened over two days ago, but I changed my mind after the arrest was announced. That counts as a "new" development in my opinion.

I've incorporated most of the feedback you provided. For the part where the type of fruit was changed, I feel it's important for readers to be aware of conflicting information. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine which is accurate, especially when the old information is still being used in numerous sources. And I definitely agree that many mainstream media sources tend to be sensationalized. The New York Post is a major offender in my opinion. But I digress. --Ixfd64 (talk) 21:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ixfd64: I am actually quite surprised to read the latest revision. It reads very well, and I am glad you eliminated almost every major issue that I have, about MSM. Thank you very much for that. Both pizero and I agree you have put significant effort to this article, and I applaud you for your efforts.

I really wanted this story to be out. When I took a shot at it, no arrests were made. Many of the "hard" news articles that I wrote over the years were on the topic which I wanted a "permanent record" of the work, which I can later critique in my off-wiki writings. That last part never happened. However, this time, when I had no idea when the arrest was going to happen (and yes, you are right; that is the focal point, which is newsworthy; I agree with you) and I left that article as it was, and went on to express my views on my website. Since I hold strong opinions about this incident, and it would take great effort for me to leave the opinions aside and be neutral on this one, I exempted myself from writing this article. CoI should be expressed, if that is the case. And it is not like I haven't written articles about something I held strong opinions while writing. I just felt the best way to spend my energy was elsewhere.

Thank you for your effort, Ixfd64. Prelim reading makes me feel it should pass the review unless something major comes up. (Re pineapple vs coconut; since it is at the bottom of the inverted pyramid, I might pass).
•–• 03:05, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Review of revision 4568539 [Not ready]

Revision 4568539 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 16:01, 6 June 2020 (UTC). Copyright: Not ready: See below. Newsworthiness: Not ready: Iffy, as the concern about neutrality also tampers with the expression of significance in the lede; see below. Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. NPOV: Not ready: See below. Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Comments by reviewer: There are a number of passages too-close-to-source, here. The first thing I generally do, in a full review of an article like this, is a preliminary check using automation to pick up hints of similar passages (and then using human understanding to see which hints are really on to something). Generally, when there are a bunch of matches on the preliminary check, there are more that turn up during in-depth review (because, in the end, this isn't something automation can do since automation doesn't know what anything means). This prelim check turned up relatively much; I'll go through what it found, below. There is also a problem with the handling of "outrage". From the perspective of Wikinews's policies/principles, to simply say that this "sparked outrage" is a neutrality violation, because first, it doesn't say who was outraged, and second, we should report on things that objectively happened rather than report on somebody's state of mind. Somebody said something, or did something. And if we say something "sparked outrage" without specifying who indicated outrage and how they indicated it, we are not giving readers enough information to assess the situation for themselves and therefore we're asking them to simply accept our assessment — and neutrality forbids us, amongst other things, to report our assessments as fact. I'm hoping a detailed run-through of the preliminarily-detected close-to-source passages may be helpful in clarifying this facet of Wikinews reportage (and hope it'll be taken in the positive spirit intended). The rule-of-thumb threshold is four consecutive words verbatim identical to source, though it's not really that simple. For example, distinctive turns of phrase should be avoided, whatever their length (the shorter they are, the more distinctive they'd have to be to matter). Grammatical structure matters: don't copy a phrase with a few words replaced by synonyms or the like, as it's still the same phrase — what's really preferable is to completely rearrange things, perhaps without even one-to-one mappings between synthesis passages and source passages. And there are various nuances; stock phrases might not matter, constructions that take a lot of tedious words in English might be less significant, etc. Lede: "was arrested on Friday". Seems trivial, right? It's just barely four words. But, it'd be so easy to break it up; say, put the "on Friday" at the front of the sentence, which is a good place for it anyway since that's extremely important for a news item, to set the stage by saying when it happened. Lede: We can mostly just not worry about stock phrase "in connection with the" (technically four words). "the death of an elephant in [the Indian state of] Kerala" is longer, but note that much of it can be broken up by simply moving the "where" to near the start of the sentence, which makes sense because that's another thing the readers should be told very early, to set the stage: where in the world are we talking about? Para 2, sentence 3: "the incident came to light" — five words, and definitely a distinctive phrase. Para 2, sentence 4: "suffered the injury 20 days" — both distinctive turn of phrase and duplicates strcuture in the process of being verbatim identical; really wants to be thoroughly broken up. Para 3, sentence 2: "a rubber tapper in his forties". Seems very likely things can be rearranged so this similarity-to-source disappears. Para 4, sentence 2: Surrounding the phrase "conclusive evidence", there's quite a long passage here identical to BBC (except for changing "said" to "stated"), a relatively long part of which overlaps with a similar phrase from The Tribune. Para 4, sentence 3: "It is not clear whether the elephant". This also seems to want clarified attribution: it's an assessment, so for neutrality we want to be sure it doesn't appear to be ours. If it's part of what the forestry department said, carried on from the previous sentence, some tweak could make that clear (while in the process of eliminating the similarity-to-source). Questions about the above? Ask. If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.

Revision 4568539 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and found not ready at 16:01, 6 June 2020 (UTC). Copyright: Not ready: See below. Newsworthiness: Not ready: Iffy, as the concern about neutrality also tampers with the expression of significance in the lede; see below. Verifiability: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. NPOV: Not ready: See below. Style: Not reviewed. Please address other issues. Comments by reviewer: There are a number of passages too-close-to-source, here. The first thing I generally do, in a full review of an article like this, is a preliminary check using automation to pick up hints of similar passages (and then using human understanding to see which hints are really on to something). Generally, when there are a bunch of matches on the preliminary check, there are more that turn up during in-depth review (because, in the end, this isn't something automation can do since automation doesn't know what anything means). This prelim check turned up relatively much; I'll go through what it found, below. There is also a problem with the handling of "outrage". From the perspective of Wikinews's policies/principles, to simply say that this "sparked outrage" is a neutrality violation, because first, it doesn't say who was outraged, and second, we should report on things that objectively happened rather than report on somebody's state of mind. Somebody said something, or did something. And if we say something "sparked outrage" without specifying who indicated outrage and how they indicated it, we are not giving readers enough information to assess the situation for themselves and therefore we're asking them to simply accept our assessment — and neutrality forbids us, amongst other things, to report our assessments as fact. I'm hoping a detailed run-through of the preliminarily-detected close-to-source passages may be helpful in clarifying this facet of Wikinews reportage (and hope it'll be taken in the positive spirit intended). The rule-of-thumb threshold is four consecutive words verbatim identical to source, though it's not really that simple. For example, distinctive turns of phrase should be avoided, whatever their length (the shorter they are, the more distinctive they'd have to be to matter). Grammatical structure matters: don't copy a phrase with a few words replaced by synonyms or the like, as it's still the same phrase — what's really preferable is to completely rearrange things, perhaps without even one-to-one mappings between synthesis passages and source passages. And there are various nuances; stock phrases might not matter, constructions that take a lot of tedious words in English might be less significant, etc. Lede: "was arrested on Friday". Seems trivial, right? It's just barely four words. But, it'd be so easy to break it up; say, put the "on Friday" at the front of the sentence, which is a good place for it anyway since that's extremely important for a news item, to set the stage by saying when it happened. Lede: We can mostly just not worry about stock phrase "in connection with the" (technically four words). "the death of an elephant in [the Indian state of] Kerala" is longer, but note that much of it can be broken up by simply moving the "where" to near the start of the sentence, which makes sense because that's another thing the readers should be told very early, to set the stage: where in the world are we talking about? Para 2, sentence 3: "the incident came to light" — five words, and definitely a distinctive phrase. Para 2, sentence 4: "suffered the injury 20 days" — both distinctive turn of phrase and duplicates strcuture in the process of being verbatim identical; really wants to be thoroughly broken up. Para 3, sentence 2: "a rubber tapper in his forties". Seems very likely things can be rearranged so this similarity-to-source disappears. Para 4, sentence 2: Surrounding the phrase "conclusive evidence", there's quite a long passage here identical to BBC (except for changing "said" to "stated"), a relatively long part of which overlaps with a similar phrase from The Tribune. Para 4, sentence 3: "It is not clear whether the elephant". This also seems to want clarified attribution: it's an assessment, so for neutrality we want to be sure it doesn't appear to be ours. If it's part of what the forestry department said, carried on from the previous sentence, some tweak could make that clear (while in the process of eliminating the similarity-to-source). Questions about the above? Ask. If possible, please address the above issues then resubmit the article for another review (by replacing {{tasks}} in the article with {{review}}). This talk page will be updated with subsequent reviews.

@Pi zero: Thanks for your detailed comments. I believe I've addressed all the areas where the wording was close to the original sources. I've also de-emphasized the outrage on social media as it's not really relevant anymore. --Ixfd64 (talk) 21:28, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Review of revision 4568845 [Passed]

Revision 4568845 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 23:04, 7 June 2020 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: None added. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 4568845 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 23:04, 7 June 2020 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: None added. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

@Pi zero: Thanks. I know both you and Acagastya also spent a lot of effort checking the facts! --Ixfd64 (talk) 23:08, 7 June 2020 (UTC)