Talk:Trial of Knox and Sollecito

Created

The article "Trial of Knox and Sollecito" was created by long-term user Wikid77 on 8 December 2009, as a subarticle of the large (48kb) article "Murder of Meredith Kercher". The intent is to allow details about the trial to be expanded, after having been deleted from the main article, in a separate sub-article with ample space to add more details. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:19, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Notability of trial

Because the trial lasted 12 months (January-December 2009) and was planned during the 3-year period of 2007-2009, there are many major sources documenting the world-media coverage of the trial and the related events. The trial garnered extensive media interest because it was prosecuted as a sexual torture/killing of a 21-year-old woman, allegedly pre-planned by a group of 3 people aged 20-23 years, who had known each other less than 3 weeks. Meanwhile, the lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini was allowed to conduct the trial while under indictment for improper conduct in a prior trial, with sanctions against him delayed until January 2010. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:19, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Biased, unnecessary article

This whole piece is biased in favour of Knox and Sollecito. It was only created to get around the scrutinity of the main article and should be deleted. 91.104.84.139 (talk) 01:19, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, but the above topic title "Biased crap" is not an example of would-be neutral (NPOV) wording. Please don't claim an NPOV issue, when the details of the article reflect what many reliable sources are stating. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• It is a NPOV issue because it is biased by being firstly unduly weighted towards controversy about reported evidence and secondly by using non-neutral language. Just using verifiable information or citing "reliable sources" does not impart a NPV, a balance of opinions should be given and a neutral tone adopted at all times. This article fails on both counts and should be extensively reworked. However the use of the word crap is not acceptable and I am amending the section heading to remove the unregistered user's offensive word. rturus (talk) 15:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

This article is necessary because otherwise the main article would be either too long, or would omit a significant amount of relevant info. It needs to be improved and neutralised, not deleted. Lkjhgfdsa 0 (talk) 05:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The bias in this article is ridiculous. Petepetepetepete (talk) 08:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Also contains nothing that could not be included in the main article. Should be deleted. --FormerIP (talk) 10:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• The main article exceeds the 32kb page-size limit, by over 50% too large. A deletion of this article would be a severe violation of Wikipedia policies. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• There is no 32kb page-size limit. That was removed a long time ago. The only limit recommended for technical reasons is 400kb. Readability guidelines are listed but these are only guidelines. If you want to use the size argument to create article spinouts, all well and good but you need to follow the guidelines for that (see my other notes). At the moment this article is still clearly a POV fork. rturus (talk) 15:21, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, there IS a 32kb limit for mobile devices. In general, a user can avoid the limit by section-editing of a page, but the limit does exist. Please read current guidelines: WP:Splitting and WP:SIZE about the 32kb limit and WP:Accessibility for dial-up users. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I repeat there is no limit, as I said above there are only guidelines. rturus (talk) 12:22, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

This article is not biased, how about Joan of Arc trial? there's a wikipedia article dedicated to specifically about her trial each hearing she had. Is that biased? I believe this article is balanced, although I don't know to an extent of this trial - I can give my opinion that it did receive a lot of attention from outside the U.S, Italy and of course the U.K. I believe this article should be watched in regards to manipulation, altering or vandalising of this article by immature people who troll, abusive, argue, spam without debate or backing up statement, just to spite or hate against this two. —58.172.17.233 (talk) 14:37, 10 December 2009

Just my worthless personal opinion, but I think comparing Knox to Joan of Arc gives a good insight into what lies at the bottom of the issues with this sub-article. --FormerIP (talk) 14:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Appears to be a legitimate spinoff that could help make the main article easier to read.Christaltips (talk) 17:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The article is biased. It's also particularly interesting that the ideas about A.K.'s treatment in the Italian media actually correspond rather to her image in the British press (Foxy Knoxy etc.). And no mention of the scenario of the escalating dispute (possibly fueled by the fact that the defendants were on drugs), debated in the court. And who cleaned (only ONE A.K.'s fingerprint was found there, though she lived there for 6 weeks) and bleached the flat? Guédé did not, there are witnesses who prove his presence elsewhere later that night. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.27.216.244 (talk) 21:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Have I been living in an alternate reality or was it actually the American media that promoted this 'Foxy Knoxy' myth? Before they claimed that she'd been portrayed as Foxy K and it was all a conspiracy theory against America none of the press coverage implied that she was a femme fatale, just that she killed Meredith Kercher, which she did. 91.104.69.154 (talk) 00:30, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

NPOV tag

I have added the NPOV tag to the article page. The article currently looks like a POV Fork Wikipedia:Content_forking . Whilst it is entirely legitimate to create an article spinout (I am sure the intent of the article creator - Wikid77), the guidelines in Wikipedia:Summary_style need to be heeded.

Currently the original article section has not been summarised and the content transferred / refactored into this new article. This has allowed NPOV material to proliferate, giving undue weight, lack of balance and lack of impartial tone.

If the article is not radically edited to conform to Wikipedia guidelines I believe it should be proposed AfD Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.rturus (talk) 11:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Again, there is a fundamental misunderstanding: the subarticle was created to allow for expansion, rather than elimination, of more details about the trial events. The current level of added details, beyond the original 3 paragraphs, already meets the Wikipedia guidelines for a subarticle which contains more information backed by reliable sources. An expansion of details about controversies is not considered an NPOV bias, as long as the coverage represents mainstream viewpoints, rather than expanding on the views of a single reporter or a single source. There are at least 20 reliable sources that can be cited to support the details of the many controversies. Hence, this is clearly not a case of WP:NPOV bias; however, some more controversies should be listed, soon, to avoid the impression that the article is omitting those major issues. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Currently your statement is not correct: 1) You should read the links I have given where you will note that as the article reads at the moment it clearly looks like POV forking. 2) The article appears to only be a place for you to espouse criticism of the trial of Amanda Knox, not detail the actual facts of the trial.

The whole article is clearly NOT NPOV at the moment. I did say that I thought you intended to create a legitimate article spin-out but at the moment that is not the case.

Either improve the article or face it being proposed AfD. rturus (talk) 15:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• At best, this article reads like a bulleted, unchallenged list of reason why Amanda Knox is requesting an appeal. It is not apparent in this article that the prosecution has not been able to respond or challenge any of these items. Keep in mind that the jury took ~13 hours to deliberate and come to its decision, that in and of itself should be telling. Jonathan 20:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathancjudd (talk • contribs)

Various controversies

The section in question is really objectionable. That is in fact a list of POV critics to the Trial and the Italian media. I expected these sort of comments on blogs or forums, not on an independent Encyclopedia.--Grifomaniacs (talk) 20:20, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Looking it over briefly, most of it seems to be verifiable. There may be some POV issues in wording, and some opposing points of view have been left out, but it's not completely out of line. Blowfish (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Title

I'm not sure that the title is adequate. Perhaps if the whole names were included, it might be better? Blowfish (talk) 23:46, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

AfD

I've nominated for AfD. But not properly. If you can tell why the title is showing here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2009_December_11, then please fix. --FormerIP (talk) 02:13, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Working now: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Trial_of_Knox_and_Sollecito --FormerIP (talk) 02:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Actual charges and verdicts?

I have made some changes on this article page and the main article page changing the conspiracy to murder convictions to "Murder and sexual assault". However I also changed the remarks on Guede to "conspiracy to murder" in the text. Unfortunately I might have been wrong in doing the latter, my apologies and if the actual charges and convictions can be obtained from a reliable source will someone post them (and the citation) here or on the page. I know for example that Knox and Sollecito were also found guilty of unlawful possession of a weapon and of staging a crime scene but not guilty of theft and that Knox was found guilty of defamation. I am sure there are other charges and/or verdicts but I cannot find English language references. Again, apologies for any error and please feel free to correct if you have reliable citations. rturus (talk) 11:25, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I made this same comment in the main article and didn't want it to be forgotten here. I have edit rights here, but I don't dare touch anything, so I'll just offer these links to the references supporting the convictions for Guede as "Murder and sexual assault": Times Online, Time, TGCom. Christaltips (talk) 19:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

At Wikipedia, we don't judge a case, we just report it

The main focus of Wikipedia is WP:Verifiability, not ultimate truth. This is an issue that seems to take years for some editors to fully comprehend. Wikipedia just reports what the reliable sources claim, whether they are right or wrong. We report that Charles Manson said that "Helter Skelter" would be the final battle at the end of the world, but the editors of Wikipedia are not claiming he was right. The same applies to this article. For a legal case, we just report what is claimed in reliable sources: if they report remarks made by the defence, or prosecution, we just include the major viewpoints of each. We do not exclude defence remarks because the prosecution won the verdict and judged the defence as "wrong". Wikipedia does not attempt to conduct a sort of "re-trial by wiki" to somehow show that a jury was right or wrong. We just repeat what others said, without making any final judgments. Think of Wikipedia as a collection of old news, with the editors as journalists who organize the old-data of the world. We are not here to judge "guilty" or "not guilty". We just combine all viewpoints of a case, from what multiple people report. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Should parties to the case have separate pages?

I apologize in advance for reopening a can of worms, but it seems that much of the discussion has to do with how individual parties are being represented. If there is more interest in one party, then this and the original article will continue to appear unbalanced if only due to the amount of text devoted to each. Note that there already exist various articles in Wikipedia devoted to individual crime victims (see Jon Benet Ramsey, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca as well as criminals (see Scott Peterson,Susan Atkins and legal officials (see Johnnie Cochran, Dan Conley so it would not be unprecedented. This might also make it easier for the most interested editors and readers to scrutinize the particular bias issues that they are concerned about more easilyChristaltips (talk) 15:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The individuals are only notable in relation to the case. I vote for just one article. It means we have to work hard to get the balance and objectivity...but that's what an encyclopaedia is all about. Bluewave (talk) 15:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a lot more media coverage of Knox than of the others in the case, which is why this article and the main one have a disproportionate amount of info on her. I don't see how that can warrant giving Knox her own page, even though the media have changed their focus more and more away from the victim and murder, towards being about her and her possible innocence. Lkjhgfdsa 0 (talk) 17:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Alleged police malpractice (hardly "brutality"!)

I don't know why I have bothered to make changes to the "police brutality" section since I think this whole page is incredibly biased to favour Knox and I have voted for it's deletion. However I have replaced some very pejorative words, and added a couple of clarifying points. People might like to read some transcripts to get their facts right, but I suppose that is a bit much to ask. rturus (talk) 19:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)19:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

• That's fine. In general, when a girl is hit twice on the head, not an accidental bump, that is considered police brutality in democratic countries. Use a search-engine to hunt for more about the issue. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Please stop trying to lecture me. I have been trying to find the report I saw on the 'net attributing a statement from one of Knox's defence team at the very start of the whole process which stated that Knox had told them that there had been no mistreatment. Unfortunately I cannot find it and quite honestly I have a life. If I come across it I will post it. In the meantime, please note that at the trial the police witnesses all refuted the allegations and that action has been initiated against those who have made these allegations. When a defendant tries to refute the validity of a statement that does not mean they are being truthful. In her testimony Knox did allege that she was mistreated, she did not claim that such treatment was brutal. rturus (talk) 15:38, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The quotation I was referring to:- However Amanda’s lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, confirmed that Amanda had not actually been beaten or “smacked around” at Rudy Guede’s fast-track trial last October: “There were pressures from the police but we never said she was hit.” [1] rturus (talk) 14:17, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Tag a POV-dispute rather than delete text

This is a reminder, when the content of a section seems to be biased or unfair relative to the section heading, then that section can be tagged for a POV-dispute, to be resolved by consensus on the talk-page. Insert a tag, such as: {{POVdispute|talkheader}} or {{POV|talkheader}}. It is improper to delete whole paragraphs of text simply because the text (although verifiable) does not meet someone's idea of balanced viewpoints. The appropriate remedy is to discuss potential changes on the talk-page, or gain consensus before removing verifiable text. If the disputed text has a footnote source, then that source must be checked for verification, even if people hate to read detailed sources. However, part of the discussion could be a request to pinpoint the supporting evidence within a large footnote source. Again, please do not delete whole sections due to a difference of opinion. In a rare, abandoned article, there might be nobody to discuss the balance, but in an article edited every few days, consensus (agreement) should be sought about editing the text for POV-balance. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikid77 continual POV editing

Once again I find Widid77 reverting edits to enhance a blatant POV in this article. When will the AfD notice result in this obvious POV-fork being sorted once and for all? rturus (talk) 12:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no Wikipedia policy that bans any sourced, verifiable text due to "POV". The appropriate response is to discuss the matter on the talk-page first, not delete text and then claim it presented information that you disagree with. I had re-added text backed (thoroughly) with 4 separate reliable sources as 4 major news publications on 4 separate days in February, March and June. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:21, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The AfD ends tomorrow. --FormerIP (talk) 13:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Sources on claims of police brutality

The controversy was highlighted by news headlines in early 2009:

• "Amanda Knox 'hit in the head' during Meredith Kercher murder interrogation", Daily Telegraph, 28 Feb. 2009.
• "Amanda Knox says police mistreated her after murder", Times Online, 1 March 2009.
• "Amanda Knox tells court police hit her during interrogation", The Guardian, 12 June 2009.
• "U.S. student testifies Italian police pressured her", CNN.com, 13 June 2009.

Notes

Those reports were all published during the formal trial (January-December 2009) of Knox/Sollecito. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:21, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• WikID77: You are also selectively leaving out this text from the Telegraph article: "a female police officer...said she had "absolutely not" hit Miss Knox and that she had questioned her "firmly but politely"." This contradicts Knox's allegations and is exactly why this section should be considered as POV. If you are truly interested in NPOV, you should be sure to put in everyplace where this happens. Jonathan (talk) 16:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind, Jonathan, but I edited out the name above (WP:BLP). --FormerIP (talk) 17:00, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

No problem, FormerIP, thank your for the reminder, I hadn’t thought about the WP:BLP. Could we edit this section to at least include the text that refutes the “brutality” allegations? This is a great example of how bits and pieces and quotes are cherry picked to present a POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.95.216.224 (talk) 19:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

• I am sorry but this looks like a real campaign Wikid77. You are being very selective about what you are posting and you have a habit of using language that you think lends weight to your opinions. You posts here and on the related pages are quite sad really. Your rants and opinions, such as the posting on the Kercher talk page titled "American view is anti-fascist or anti-brutality not anti-Italy", really undermine any pretence you might have towards being un-biased. rturus (talk) 00:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Forums are not reliable sources

There have been several users who have linked, or footnoted, webpages at the website http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C356/ ("True Justice for Meredith Kercher"). That website contains blog postings and forum discussions. Some entries are posted by a "Hellodalai" (Hello Dolly + "Dalai Lama"). Please remember that Wikipedia requires reliable sources (not forums) for footnotes and references (see WP:RS). Other websites can be read to look for hints, but those opinions must be backed by reliable sources, or easily verified by the readers. (Hence, no source is needed for "Kercher died in Italy" because that is easily verified; see WP:Verify.)

However, beware of websites that post news-entries by a "Hellodalai" or "Poly Ester" or her step-sisters Poly Nomial & Poly Wannacracker. Please try to retain that separation: read blogs for some possible hints about events, but only add text that can be verified in reliable sources (WP:RS). Meanwhile, remember that blogs can be very misleading: giving the totally false impression that "Knox/Sollecito were caught with one hand on the floor-mop and the other putting Kercher's bloody clothes in the washer" (not true), when in fact, police/judges claim that Kercher's clothes were still in the locked room with her, with Guede's DNA on the zipper to her purse where some claim that money was missing, and Kercher's mobile phones were found in a garden blocks away. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:21, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Merge

Wikid77 has helpfully been through and added content from this article to Murder of Meredith Kercher. This appears to have been quite thorough - I can't see any outstanding material not already contained in the other article that was not moved over. Are there any objections to deleting this article now? --FormerIP (talk) 01:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

The subarticle should not be deleted at this time. There is a malfunction on the main article, as viewed from SOME but not all computers. Some people can see edits only through Dec. 16. These do not include any of Wikid's edits. There is no rush to delete. It should not be done until the malfunction on the main article is resolved. PilgrimRose (talk) 02:44, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I know it sounds obvious, but have you tried refreshing the page? --FormerIP (talk) 02:51, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

We don't keep material just because some people can't see it elsewhere. If there is not material that still needs moved, this page can be redirected now. Grsz¹¹ 03:20, 20 December 2009 (UTC)