Talk:McGruff the Crime Dog/Archives/2016

Removal of arrest information

I removed the section about the arrest of a person who played McGruff. The edit was reverted by Ghostofnemo as it was "relevant, reliably sourced and NPOV" and "notable, national news story". Including the information is not beneficial and just coatrack information. The information is not relevant.

Including information about a random person who happened to have played McGruff in the 90s (and not even a notable McGruff like the first one or one on television) getting arrested for something unrelated to him being McGruff is immatterial to the coverage of the character. If he was the first McGruff, or committed a crime while in the outfit, I'd say it was worth including, but this has nothing to do with McGruff.

Including the information, particularly as its own section, is not NPOV per WP:UNDUE as it's giving undue weight to what is essentially trivial information. Including an entire section on a singular person who got arreted for something years after they played one of the thousands of McGruffs in the nation is not giving due weight to information.

Notability doesn't apply to content within an article so whether or not it's notable doesn't matter for inclusion (due weight does). For example, modern flat earth theories are notable (we have Modern flat Earth societies) but it would be undue weight to include them in Geography. That being said, the three articles being cited don't show notability in the first place. WP:N says "It is common for multiple newspapers or journals to publish the same story, sometimes with minor alterations or different headlines, but one story does not constitute multiple works". The three articles all contain the exact same information with minor revisions.

There is no good reason for the inclusion of this material. Prosthesis#Oscar Pistorius doesn't include anything about his arrest or murder trial, for example, because it's entirely immaterial to the coverage of prosthetics. Same here, some guy who used to play McGruff getting arrested for something he did after being McGruff has nothing to do with our coverage and should not be included. Wugapodes (talk) 01:08, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Editors are not supposed to determine notability - discussion by reliable sources determines notability. The cited national news stories confirm that this information is notable. Ghostofnemo (talk) 09:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I intended to add this to another section instead of giving it its own section, but where would it go? In the lead? Ghostofnemo (talk) 09:19, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Quoting from my previous response: "Notability doesn't apply to content within an article so whether or not it's notable doesn't matter for inclusion (due weight does)." And "WP:N says "It is common for multiple newspapers or journals to publish the same story, sometimes with minor alterations or different headlines, but one story does not constitute multiple works". The three articles all contain the exact same information with minor revisions." There isn't any discussion, it's the same story that happened to be published in multiple outlets, which the notability guideline makes explicitly clear does not pass the notability threshold. Whether it is or is not notable doesn't matter, because notability doesn't apply to article content.

The better question is what does the arrest of this person add to our coverage of the character? What do readers learn about the character by including this information that would be lost without it? Wugapodes (talk) 16:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

From WP:NPOV - "Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight." Ghostofnemo (talk) 12:03, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm well aware of that guideline, I referenced it in my first post and already explained how the inclusion is undue weight. So explain to me how trivial information about someone, who a decade prior played one of thousands of McGruffs, getting arrested for something unrelated to them being McGruff is due weight in an article about McGruff. Wugapodes (talk) 17:01, 21 January 2016 (UTC)