Talk:Death of Michael Rosenblum

Comments

This article covers a complex subject & has a number of issues related to WP:BLP. While it still needs work & there are a few loose threads needing to be tied off, that it reads as good as it does is a praiseworthy accomplishment. -- llywrch (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. As for the "loose threads", I tried to tie off as many as I could, but the reliable sources I could find are not always so cooperative (I think, really, that the loose threads in question haven't been tied off in real life, and that's part of the problem). Daniel Case (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Tone

This article is not written like an encyclopedia article, with background, facts/events, and discussion. Instead, it reads more like a newspaper or magazine article, "beginning near the end" with the discovery of the skull fragment and then moving around, temporally. There is, for example, very little about the family of the victim: the story jumps from his birth year to his late teens in the next sentence. A fair amount of the text could be seen as taking a particular point of view. One might compare other crime articles, especially "murder of ___", such as Murder of Meredith Kercher or Murder of Travis Alexander. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 19:56, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

@Piledhigheranddeeper:There is, for example, very little about the family of the victim: the story jumps from his birth year to his late teens in the next sentence. Blame the sources, not the article ... what details I could find, I put in. But it is a thanatography, not a biography, and the reader only needs to know those details that help explain why Rosenblum was in his girlfriend's car 40 years ago, anyway (which is what's in the sources, too).

For the same reason, that this is the story of a death, not a life, I began it with the discovery of the skull, which confirmed that he was dead and ended the search. Deaths, however they happen, are events, not lives, and our articles about them need to reflect that, which means we begin by describing what happened, not who it happened to. Suggesting it be about the latter is, frankly, well established as not in keeping with BLP1E.

I don't think the Meredith Kercher article, given its tortured history, is really the best example to look at here (nonetheless, I would also point out that it spends all of two grafs on her life before she went to study in Italy) (and likewise, we get one graf of Travis Alexander's life in that article).

It seems, really, that your quarrel is with the structure of the article, perhaps, more than the tone. And if you believe there are POV sections, could you please give some specific examples here, as I asked?

Also, you haven't explained what your issue is with the referencing. Daniel Case (talk) 01:56, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Tone: as before, much of this article is written in a breezy magazine-style tone including, for example, its referring to its "star" adult victim by his first name, even in paragraphs where no other person with the same last name is mentioned; see the "Disappearance" section. The opening of the next section ("Unlike its driver, the Sunbird soon reappeared") is similarly unnecessarily purple prose; the short paragraphs throughout add to the flavor. I'm not going to list every single incidence of un-encyclopedic tone; this should be enough to get the idea.

"even in paragraphs where no other person with the same last name is mentioned". I think the general rule of that SAMESURNAME thing is (in my experience, when having written professionally elsewhere, and in other people's professional written work elsewhere), if the mentions of the other family members aren't confined to one section of the article but are regularly mentioned throughout it, just stick to the first name. SAMESURNAME even says as much: "When referring to the person who is the subject of the article, use just the surname unless the reference is part of a list of family members or if use of the surname alone will be confusing." In this case I think there are enough scattered references to Michael and his father throughout the article to justify usage of first names throughout when referring to members of the Rosenblum family.

And that is properly referred to as a usage issue. As for tone, I fixed the one thing you pointed out. If you are willing to tag the article with {{tone}}, I think you should be willing to list more than one example.

The short grafs are not a problem; the point is for it to be easy to read. MOS:PARA does not specify a particular graf length; it does, however, point out that "paragraphs that exceed a certain length become hard to read." Daniel Case (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Viewpoint: The article (not just one section) definitely seems to want to blame the police, without actually saying so. Is there some way to dial that back?

That no doubt reflects the sources. All we can do is report what they say, leave conclusions to readers without nudging them there, and update the article if any new information becomes available that might put things in a different light. No one on the police side of things ever said much on their own behalf; where they have I put it in the article (Chief Gaburri's "I don't know what his problem is, and I don't really care", and Miscenik's "Is rhat right?") along with the results of the official investigations and the village's CSC overturning Gaburri's firing. Daniel Case (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

References: This article relies heavily on a small number of sources, one of which (apparently a magazine article, although the URL is sitcomsonline.com) is cited 63 times (spread out over 4 footnotes)—far more than all the other sources combined. It would be improved by additional sources.

--Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 20:00, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I went to great lengths to find what old newspaper articles I could that covered the case to supplement the magazine article. I count about 17 other sources besides it, which are cited about 41 times total.

I'm sure there are additional sources ... I'd love it if the Post-Gazette would make more of its coverage, or the Press's for that matter, available online (I understand they might have to digitize it as it was all pre-Internet). I'm sure some of them are in libraries and on microfilm, perhaps, but as I don't live near Pittsburgh, or in Western PA, I can't easily go look for them. Should they become available in the future, and offer some additional relevant information, I'll add it (or, of course, someone else can). Daniel Case (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)