Talk:Richard Roose

Requested move 9 February 2020

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. Andrewa (talk) 20:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

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Murders of Richard Roose → Richard Roose – Richard Roose is the original article. It has an substantive page history and was redirected to this new article without discussion. The old title is more in line with typical naming conventions – we don't have articles titled Murders of Ted Bundy or Murders of H. H. Holmes, for example. Surachit (talk) 05:25, 9 February 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:22, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

• I'm sympathetic to the suggestion of maintaining the article history; in fact, it's an excellent idea, so would definitely support a history merge.
  As for the requested move itself, I obviously disagree. When I turned this (<12,000 bytes) into this (>58,000 bytes), I considered the title carefully. It was clear that "Richard Roose" is wholly insufficient, implying as it does that this is somehow a biography of a man of that name. Yet, all we know is summed up in ~40 words: literally, (quote me) Nothing is known of his life or career until the events of 1531, and the scholarship reflects that. Historians who have discussed the case have not done so in the context of Rooose himself; they have done so re. what the events demonstrate wrt relations between the Court and Fisher, the medieval view of poison, new forms of punishment and the relationship between Henrician legislation and the Reformation (etc). Not on Roose the man, for the simple reason that there is (almost) nothing to say—which was also reflected in the original misleading title. The article title should reflect that its topic is a series of events rather than an individual (WP:NDESC).
  Wrt Ted Bundy, Holmes etc, well, obviously other murderers exist. In those cases (as with the majority of modern criminals), enough is known from reliable sources as to allow us to create a biography, on which their crimes—while being the primary reason for their notability—can be draped. To re-emphasise: clearly this is not the case with Roose, and comparisons with modern murderers is a false equivalence. Ironically, a better example from the proposer's perspective would probably be this guy; since no-one knows who he was, it's arguably even less of a biography than Roose. Having said that, the difference is obvious: Hundreds of books, amounting to, what, thousands? millions? of words have been expounded on him, which is as far from the case with Roose as could possibly be.
  For the record, I oppose the move, but I'd agree that the title could need tweaking. I originally plumped for the most obvious one that sprang to mind, but a cogent argument could be made that, since we can't be sure that Roose even committed the crime, another title might be needed to reflect this (1531 Lambeth palace poisonings, perhaps?).
  ——SN54129 12:30, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
• The current title is definitely going against the established practise where "Murder(s) of <person(s)>" articles are named after the victim, not the perpetrator. I therefore agree that the article should be moved. I'm neutral on the current proposed title. BegbertBiggs (talk) 00:08, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
• After reading the article, how about either Murders by Richard Roose or Poisonings by Richard Roose or 1531 Lambeth Palace poisonings? IMO one of these titles is more suitable than the current title and the proposed one. George Ho (talk) 06:23, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
• Support. Since this episode is primarily notable for the nature of his execution and not for his crimes it seems perfectly satisfactory and better practice to return the article to the original title. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:26, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Not the case. For a start, an article that concentrated only on the execution of an individual, with no surrounding biographical detail, would be a very poor biography. More to the point, per this episode is primarily notable for the nature of his execution, well, 180 words out of 4524 —about 5%—are about his execution; the vast majority of the article is the series of events. ——SN54129 12:39, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I said his execution is mainly what he's notable for, not what the article is mainly about. His crimes are barely remembered. His being boiled to death certainly is. His name has gone down in history as one of the only people in English history to be executed in this way. Therefore the article is best just under his name. When a criminal is actually notable under their name, as opposed to just notable for their crimes (and their name is mostly forgotten, as is often the case), then the article on them is usually under that name. As the nomination says, we have articles entitled Ted Bundy and H. H. Holmes, as well as many others, because their names are well-known. I see no point in making up a title when Roose's name alone is fine as the title. This seems to be pointless philosophising and not at all helpful to Wikipedia. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:21, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

First things first: please desist from phrases such as pointless philosophising; you may be mistaken as attempting to be deliberately offensive.

The title does not reflect the topic's notability, it accurately summarises the page. I have already explained how comparing this case with Bundy et al. is as apples to oranges; reiteration does not make it less so. But I agree that Lambeth Palace poisonings is probably the most accurate and concise title we can find. Cheers! ——SN54129 15:48, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I clearly was not being deliberately offensive. I merely said trying to find another title for an existing perfectly good title is pointless. I obviously disagree with you about Bundy etc. It is true that not much is known about Roose, but his name definitely is. In what possible way is removing his name from the article title in any way an improvement? -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:08, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I also realise what you have actually done. Instead of moving the existing article to a new title as you should have done, you have created a new article and redirected the existing article to it. That isn't the way we do things on Wikipedia. We should actually revert it all to the original title, then discuss a move away from that if that is what you propose. We are doing this backwards. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:16, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support As noted by BegbertBiggs above, every other article that begins with "Murders of", such as Murders of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, is a situation describing two or more people having been murdered; here is the only case of "Murders of" purporting to discuss the murders of a murderer. This is confusing, so I would support this move if only based upon the principle of WP:LEAST all by itself. Further, while not much is known about Roose outside his poisonings, the punishment he received and the changes in legislation that ensued because of him, that is already quite enough to make the article about him. Roose is associated with a WP:SINGLEEVENT, where writing an article about the person is not clear cut. The relevant text states If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate. The assassins of major political leaders, such as Gavrilo Princip, fit into this category, as indicated by the large coverage of the event in reliable sources that devotes significant attention to the individual's role. John Fisher was a significant religious leader whose attempted assassination by Roose would seem to allow for the move and the separate article being named after him. StonyBrook (talk) 09:29, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
• While I agree that the title is potentially confusing – I certainly first read the title expecting that "murders of" would be followed by the names of the victims, and had to reassess on seeing only a single name – I equally agree with SN54129 that titling the article Richard Roose is no better as this is fundamentally an article on the murders, not on Roose. I could be happy with something like 1531 Lambeth Palace poisonings as suggested above. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:12, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• Comment. I have restored Richard Roose as an article. Whatever the result here, it should have been moved, not redirected with the edit history being lost. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:58, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
• Support per nom and usual convention - articles on murders by a single person should be housed at that person's bio page, unless the bio and the murders are both significant enough to be separated. I will perform a WP:HISTMERGE of the two pages now as it looks as if, regardless of the outcome of this discussion, that will be necessary - nobody is arguing for separate bios and murder pages. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 22:17, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Theories section

I have drafted the Theories section, Serial Number 54129 at this page. It has the same content as the current article, but is reorganized a bit... and I added subsections to the Legal proceedings section.

There are also two potential image for the intro section, but they aren't quite as relevant as I'd like. What do you think?–CaroleHenson (talk) 03:46, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to do whatever you'd like.–CaroleHenson (talk) 03:49, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I copied over the revised article with the Theories section here, according to the discussion with Serial Number 54129 here.

This version essentially shifts content from Motives and other sections to the new Theories section and its subsections. It adds some characters for the new headings.–CaroleHenson (talk) 20:46, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I just switched around the contents in the first and second paragraph a bit. Look good?–CaroleHenson (talk) 21:38, 23 April 2020 (UTC)