Talk:2022 Brink's theft

tone tag
, can you point to specific issues with tone? Valereee (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC) Since you re-instated the tag, could you explain what's wrong with the tone? The burden of proof is on you and the person who added it originally. Morogris ( ✉  •  ✎  ) 15:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I removed the tag. It's not okay to do this and not explain why in the talkpage, especially when this is being displayed in the mainpage for DYK. Morogris ( ✉  •  ✎  ) 14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not explaining the tag sooner (I didn't intend to start any arguments with it...). I'm not sure if I can explain my thought process in super concrete terms—the prose just feels somehow colloquial and/or editorialized to me at times—but I'll try to give a few examples:
 * - "Some of the jewelers believe that the theft was an inside job, or at least that Brink's may know more than it has publicly disclosed."
 * - "Some of the jewelers have sued the company, however, admitting that they like many of their colleagues routinely understated the value of the jewelry being transported on manifests they filed with Brink's...."
 * - "... were getting ready to close up and pack after three days..."
 * - "But Beaty said he had gone into the sleeper at 3:39 p.m. the preceding afternoon..."
 * - "Deputies also could not resolve another contradiction."
 * - "Witnesses in the area at the time were able to give law enforcement one possible lead."
 * - "The jewelers, incredulous at what seemed to them to be weak and lax security, filed a separate suit two weeks later..."
 * - "For those who have continued in the business, other difficulties remain."
 * (Disclaimer: These are from the current version of the article, rather than the specific revision from when I originally added the tag.)
 * Of course, maybe I'm way off base and the article is totally fine as-is—looking at the discussion below, it does seem like a lot of people think so.
 * BalinKingOfMoria (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Why don’t you start by looking at the first paragraph. Tell me if you think that looks like a lead paragraph from an encyclopedia, or the opening of a true-crime pulp article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwirkle (talk • contribs)
 * I don't think you understand how the burden of proof works, so I'll make this easier for you. Please specify what you think needs to be fixed or amended and suggest what changes would be better. In fact, consider making the edit yourself since you were bold enough to put a tag in the article. Morogris ( ✉  •  ✎  ) 17:31, 11 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I support removing the tone tag. The only real "issue" I see personally is that the opening sentence is a bit unusual compared to MOS:LEADSENTENCE; if people want to improve it, I don't see why they wouldn't just do so directly. I don't see anything else that justifies tagging the entire article as having tone issues. Dylnuge  (Talk • Edits) 17:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think if that's what's justifying the tag (as it seems to for the supposedly semi-retired Qwirkle), it's because when I write an article about an event I want to make that clear from the very beginning. Since often these involve real, named living people, if you boldface those names you give people the excuse to start making the article a biography.
 * I'm sure some people would be a lot more comfortable with a lede that began "The 2022 Brinks theft took place ..." I would direct them to read MOS:BOLDAVOID (If the article's title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the first sentence, the wording should not be distorted in an effort to include it. Instead, simply describe the subject in normal English, avoiding unnecessary redundancy.) and per that last part MOS:REDUNDANCY. I know from experience that if we were to begin the way I think those objecting here would have it, the way I demonstrated above, that we would inevitably have to revert well-intended edits to the effect of "The 2022 Brink's theft occurred on July 11, 2022, in Lebec, California, United States, when jewelry valued in the millions of dollars was stolen from the back of a Brink's truck parked at a truck stop." Apparently some editors believe people are incapable of reading and understanding bold text.
 * Furthermore WP:TONE makes it pretty clear that the tag is related to an editors choice of words, that it might be too informal, colloquial or jargon-heavy. It has nothing to do with narrative structure. Daniel Case (talk) 17:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As a quick glance at WP:TONE will show, that is simply untrue. There is an entire section devoted to...well, let's just quote in full:

News style or persuasive writing As a matter of policy, Wikipedia is not written in news style (in any sense other than some use of the inverted pyramid, above), including tone. The encyclopedic and journalistic intent and audience are different. Especially avoid bombastic wording, attempts at humor or cleverness, reliance on primary sources, editorializing, recentism, pull quotes, journalese, and headlinese.

Similarly, avoid news style's close sibling, persuasive writing, which has many of those faults and more of its own, most often various kinds of appeals to emotion and related fallacies. This style is used in press releases, advertising, op-ed writing, activism, propaganda, proposals, formal debate, reviews, and much tabloid and sometimes investigative journalism. It is not Wikipedia's role to try to convince the reader of anything, only to provide the salient facts as best they can be determined, and the reliable sources for them.

I like the way you seem to have purposely misformatted this text so that anyone responding to it has to open up the edit window in order to respond. In any event this is not under WP:TONE, so you are purposely misrepresenting the content you purport to be linking to. While the text you quoted is further down on that page, I don't see this as "news style" ... I worked as a journalist for some time, and if I had been writing this as a news story it would have read very differently. I do not see how briefly summarizing what happened in the first graf of the intro makes it "news style". I direct your attention to MOS:OPEN: "The first paragraph should define or identify the topic with a neutral point of view, but without being too specific. It should establish the context in which the topic is being considered by supplying the set of circumstances or facts that surround it. If appropriate, it should give the location and time." I also do not see what point you are trying to make (or indeed, if you are trying to make one to begin with) by quoting that whole graf on persuasive writing. Unless you have a definition of persuasive writing so broad it extends to "trying to persuade the reader that the event being described actually happened". Daniel Case (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This article looks like it was written by a newsie channeling Ann Rule, when she was having a bad day. Qwirkle (talk) 21:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Wow, you're so cute. That remark sounds like the sort of thing movie critics used to say just to get bigger blurbs on onesheets in order to keep their employers happy. And, really, we should avoid commenting on contributors by making comments about content that disparage the creator of said content without offering any constructive criticism. We let people get away with that end run far too often. I request that you apologize to me and strike that comment through if you're serious about continuing this discussion. And if you really want to impress me, write a draft of the opening paragraph as you would have it, mindful of MOS:OPEN above. Daniel Case (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I did some rewriting. Cwater1 (talk) 19:04, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Which, sadly, I had to revert. Like Data we don't use contractions outside of quoted matter in inline encyclopedic prose, and by making "some of the jewelers" into just "some", you invited a who tag ... I had written in that way with that in mind. Daniel Case (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I do apologize. I did try improve the article, not trying to be disruptive. I didn't realize about how we don't usually write contractions. Cwater1 (talk) 21:49, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * A lot of MOS rules many of us have learned in the breach. Nothing wrong with that if you learn from it; that's how life works a lot of the time. Daniel Case (talk) 03:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)