Talk:Omagh bombing/Archives/2008/2

Improvements to be made

Some specific things:

• Bombing suspects Oliver Traynor, Sean Hoey, and Seamus McKenna need pages.
• The article should mention the specific anti-terrorism legislation enacted by the British government in response to the bombing, and criticism of that legislation.
• What kind of explosive was used? How was it located? How was it added to the car?
• The article refers to the RUC a bunch of times without explaining that it means "Royal something-or-another".
• Did anyone publicly express support for the bombing?
• It should mention the nature of the phone evidence that lead to Colm Murphy's conviction.
• It should refer to Colm Murphy's medical problems, which complicate further prosecution of him.
• It should mention the reactions of the victims to Murphy's mistrial ruling.
• It should mention the nature of the phone evidence that made Sean Hoey a suspect.
• It should mention the reactions of the victims to Hoey's not guilty verdict.

24.32.208.58 (talk) 02:04, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Taking various points in turn:

• Hoey emphatically doesn't need a page. He was found not guilty, it's really not appropriate for an article about a person whose only claim to notability is that he didn't do something. As for the others, I'll have a look for source material time permitting.
• Covered in Black Operations, I'll have a look at it later this week.
• It is actually clarified in the "Police Ombudsman report" section, but it should be in full before the first use of the acronym.
• Murphy only needs to be covered briefly in this article, with more information and context in his article. Especially considering his overturned and disputed conviction.
• I'm not keen on too much coverage on Hoey, due to his not guilty verdict. Especially considering some of the statements made by families of the victims, which Hoey has threatened legal action over.

First thing I'd get done is shorten the lead, it's too long. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, but at the moment it is most of the article. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 10:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

As for the 'RUC' thing, the article now defines the term in the first section. I removed the snippet saying "(RUC, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland)" since the renaming of the RUC doesn't seem relevent to this page. 24.32.208.58 (talk) 22:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the lead is too long compared to the rest of the article, but I think that's because the article is too short and not vise versa. 24.32.208.58 (talk) 22:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Importance

This article was at 'Low' or "Subject is mainly of specialist interest", which is ludicrous, so I changed it to 'mid' for the Republicanism Project. Right now, the article is set at 'high' for the Ireland and Terrorism Projects-- does that seem like a stretch? 24.32.208.58 (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Odd...

Interestingly, the row saying "Target = Courthouse" has disappeared off the infobox. 24.32.208.58 (talk) 03:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Assessment

At 59 reliable sources, isn't the article B-Class rather than start class? 24.32.208.58 (talk) 04:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The contents of the article in terms of bytes has more than doubled since the last assessment. 24.32.208.58 (talk) 04:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't to do with article length, at the moment the article needs the shears taking to it. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 02:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Anyways, I removed the 'expand' tag since it seems clear to me that the article doesn't need that. 24.32.208.58 (talk) 04:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I have rerated this at B/mid for the Ireland Wikiproject assessments. Quality-wise it still needs work and some pruning to gain better than that and demoted from High to Mid because it has not yet had a "large impact in their main discipline, across a couple of generations" per the criteria. The other projects can rerate according to their own criteria. Go for the formal peer review and don't be impatient like you were earlier last month. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 20:34, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

OK then, quick pointers:

• Overlinking - far too much of it. There's no need for the same thing to be repeatedly linked in a short article. You've got Michael Gallagher's name linked 4 times in one section. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 01:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
• Footnotes - far too many of them. For example there's no dispute that 29 people died in the explosion, so you really don't need four footnotes for it.
• Footnotes #2 - make sure they actually source what is being said. "On May 17, 2007, Martin McGuiness stated that Irish Republicans will cooperate with an independent, cross-border investigation if one is created" - check the footnote at the end of that sentence for example. Similarly - "On October 19, 2003, a transcript of a conversation between RIRA informer Paddy Dixon and his police handler, John White, made three days before the bombing was released in which Dixon says "Omagh is going to blow up in their faces." - and there's others too.
• Quotes - too many of them. Example - "sadly up to this point we haven't been able to charge anyone with this terrible atrocity", why is that there? You've already been over the reaction of people to the explosion, so you don't need to keep hammering the point home.
• Sources - "Also, U2 has recited the names of all 29 people killed during the bombing during public peformances of their anti-violence anthem "Sunday Bloody Sunday" needs a better source than Google search results, find a reliable one.
• Factual accuracy - How did Def Leppard write a song about the Omagh bombing during the recording of Hysteria (album), which was recorded in 1987?

One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 01:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Those are all good points. To start with, it was Euphoria (Def Leppard album). I corrected that. When it comes to footnotes not corresponding to the sentences, it's not that the sentences don't have sources-- it's that they link to the wrong ones. I fixed that for the two sentences that you mentioned. What are the other ones? 24.32.208.58 (talk) 23:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Warnings

BBC News has stated that the police "were clearing an area near the local courthouse, 40 minutes after receiving a telephone warning, when the bomb detonated. But the warning was unclear and the wrong area was evacuated."[9] The warnings mentioned "Main Street" when no "Main Street" existed in Omagh at that time.[16] The nature of the warnings lead the police to move people over to the area where the bomb was actually placed.[3][16][20][9][21] The courthouse is roughly 400 meters or 500 yards[22] from the spot where the car rested.[21] RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan accused the RIRA of trying to deliberately direct civilians to the bombing site.[22] Prosecutor Gordon Kerr QC has called the warnings "not only wrong but... meaningless" and stated that the nature of the warnings made it inevitable that the evacuations would lead to the bomb site.[23] The RIRA has strongly denied that they intended to target civilians.[20][24] They have also stated that the warnings were not indended to lead people to the bombing site.[20]

Other than a grammatically inaccurate mix of past tenses (had or has thrown around), I think that the section fairly describes all points of view. There's the BBC saying that the warnings were just unclear. There's the British government saying that they were deliberately false. There's the RIRA saying that they didn't intend to kill civilians (of course, they later said that they didn't do it at all). I would like to find a specific source saying that the RIRA gave inaccurate warnings accidentally, but I don't think there's anything wrong with the paragraph right now. Does anyone disagree? 24.32.208.58 (talk) 23:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I've edited it so it now says RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan has accused the RIRA of trying to deliberately direct civilians to the bombing site.[22] British government prosecutor Gordon Kerr QC has called the warnings "not only wrong but... meaningless" and stated that the nature of the warnings made it inevitable that the evacuations would lead to the bomb site.[23] The RIRA has strongly denied that they intended to target civilians.[20][24] They have also stated that the warnings were not indended to lead people to the bombing site.[20] During the 2003 Special Criminal Court trial of RIRA director Michael McKevitt, witnesses stated that the inaccurate warnings were accidental.[19] 24.32.208.58 (talk) 18:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Dixon

I have corrected the incorrect information from this timeline. Before anyone bleats, please look at the original story from the same source. The taped conversation did not happen three before the bombing, it happened a few days before Dixon fled Ireland which was in January 2002. It says so twice in the original report - "In the recording, made only days before the informer was forced to flee Ireland, Dixon warns the Irish state that 'Omagh is going to blow up in their faces'" and "Dixon tells White on the tape, recorded on 10 January 2002". In the same taped conversation it's said that there was a "clandestine deal between the Irish government and the Real IRA just weeks after the bombing led to charges being dropped against eight men arrested following the explosion", so it couldn't possibly have been taped before the bombimng! Dixon was never in a position to know about Omagh beforehand. He wasn't in the RIRA, he was a car thief who stole cars on behalf of a RIRA member, and knew nothing about the final plans as they were handled by a different ASU. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 05:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

If the detailed story contradicts a brief snippet on the same subject, then it does seem obvious that the actual story itself would take precedence. 70.234.246.95 (talk) 03:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Movie reference

Why was Omagh (film) removed from the 'See Also' section? 70.234.246.95 (talk) 03:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Because it's linked to inline in another section. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 03:31, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

talk page

Shouldn't the comments that are around a year or more old be moved to some kind of archive? They don't really discuss anything that isn't already settled. 70.234.246.95 (talk) 03:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)