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Talk:Burglar sign

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"Alleged scam"

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Good article from User:Zazpot, but it was originally written very hypothetically, with "alleged" and "supposedly". But the sources seem clear that this happens, with police statements to the public, so I've updated it to reflect that. Is there a reason I'm overlooking for being hesitant about it? --Lord Belbury (talk) 13:10, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Zazpot: / @Lord Belbury: All of the sources that claim there's anything to this are shaky UK tabloid articles. It's not real, barring perhaps the occasional crazy person. It's also not really a "scam"; it'd be a prepatory part of a burglary, not an attempt to commit fraud. This is on chalk symbols not stickers, but it's the same idea: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/grab-and-go-code-chalkers/ . The useful quote:
Targeting homes for illicit purposes by marking them with some exterior symbol is unnecessarily inefficient: it requires time and effort to visit homes and mark them, it risks exposure from onlookers who might notice and call attention to the activity and discover its purpose, and it risks mistakes over a shaky dependence on markings that are too easily removed (accidentally or purposely) by residents or eradicated by weather, or overlooked by those supposed to be finding them afterwards. Yet all of these vagaries can be easily avoided in one simple way: just jotting down the addresses of the homes of interest. There's no good reason for bad guys to mark a home with some form of symbol as a method for being able to find and return to it later when they could more easily and safely accomplish the same thing simply by recording its address.
That's about as good as we're going to get for a skeptical approach I suspect, in the same way that few people write articles "criminals are not using surreptitiously planted lawn ornaments to mark your home." People see weird stickers that were added by some lackey hired to advertise, check the Internet, and believe whatever urban legend they read that tells them they're actually the target of some criminal gang. It's the same as the stories about people creeping into the backseats of cars at gas stations or whatever. (The real part is the "unsavory locksmiths carpeting spam advertisements", but that's a bit different.) SnowFire (talk) 18:29, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@SnowFire: Good points. I don't know that chalk symbols are a complete parallel, though. Locksmith stickers are deniable in a way that chalk isn't, if a cop has just watched you walk along a street doing something to the doorframes of properties.
"Scam" definitely seems the wrong word to be using here. Any thoughts on a better title? Maybe it's worth widening the article to the general concept of secret burglar signs, including the chalk story above. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:57, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 21 March 2022

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page Moved to Burglar signs. (non-admin closure) signed, 511KeV (talk) 03:22, 21 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Sticker scam → Burglar signs – Per the discussion in the above section, this article could be usefully expanded to cover all forms of supposed secret messages left by burglars (such as chalk and zip ties), and what the police responses have been to the stories: locksmith stickers are only one example of these. Lord Belbury (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Spekkios (talk) 22:55, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. I forgot about this article, been meaning to come back for awhile... but it's not a scam involving stickers nor is it called such. SnowFire (talk) 13:41, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm agnostic on the main point here, but it seems like "Burglar sign" should be preferred over "Burglar signs", per WP:NCPLURAL. Colin M (talk) 14:58, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Would it not fall under the "distinguish among multiple distinct instances of related items" exception, if the article was listing several different types of burglar sign, such as locksmith stickers, chalk symbols, zip ties, etc? There's probably enough to say about each distinct type. --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:42, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Maybe, though I think it's a stretch. There's a distinction between talking about multiple instances of a thing vs. multiple subtypes. I think what you're describing is the latter. An instance of a burglar sign would be something like "This green sticker that was placed at 123 Fake street on July 10 2020". It's common for an article about some class of entities to discuss distinct subclasses, and this does not usually lead to a plural title. To take a similar example to this article, Return fraud lists a bunch of types of return fraud like "Open-box fraud" or "Cross-retailer return", but it doesn't use a plural title. Colin M (talk) 16:28, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move somewhere. I'd go with something more like Burglar marker. It's not a "sign" in the sense of signage. I would read "burglar sign" as either indicating an actual sign, or in the sense of a sign that a place has been burglarized, perhaps discernable to a detective. I agree that the current title is inaccurate, as no "scam" is involved. BD2412 T 04:17, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is serving as a kind of sign, a close parallel being the hobo sign: a secret symbol left for others in the know. Which doesn't make a lot of sense for burglars (why would I mark a house with a symbol that any other passing criminal could read, rather than one that only my close contacts recognised?), but does seem to be what the urban legends allege. --Lord Belbury (talk) 07:52, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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