Talk:Syrian Interior Minister dead from apparent suicide

Title needs changing

I don't see how this story can be seen as factual as the title indicates.Neutralizer 20:03, 12 October 2005 (UTC) I have changed the title and think the story needs more development. There seems to be no proof it was a suicide other than the words of Syria which has been deemed a rogue state by several governments. Neutralizer 20:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

So anything Syria reports can't be true, because it has been labelled a "rogue state" by some? I agree with you on the title, though, the current one is a whole better than the previous. - 85.76.225.44 21:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The new title is much better, but some of the recent edits had made a real mess of the story and not taken into account that this was listed as Lead Article. What I picked up was messy, the additional material should not have gone in as a new second paragraph as it is not key to the event. My earlier edits were to try and turn the original writer's bullet points into something that could be easily read, and the additional material made no sense to me without going and reading the source articles. There is valid material in considering that the death is suspected suicide, but it needs to be carefully written to expand on the tail end of the story. It should not be used to sensationalise what is there already.

Now, having read the sources, I think the whole thing needs a lot of work to make a really good article. However, saying the title wasn't factual isn't accurate. It was, but it was a poor headline - especially for something going up as Lead. Brianmc 21:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Placement of "murder" allegations

I'm not going to touch the text of this again, but I'd like to see the suggestion that the Syrian news agency isn't telling the truth given less emphasis. If it is going in as the second paragraph with no expansion of the first then the first sentence has to sum up the concept in about 20 words. My reasoning for applying that arbitrary rule is that the end of the first sentence in the second para. is the limit for what you can use as an extract to go on the Lead article. As it stands I don't think there is any way to take the start of this story and use it as Lead, you either don't have enough information to draw people into the story, or you have too much and make it not worth reading the article. Brianmc 22:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)