Talk:Cleveland, Texas/Archive 1

re Scott Crockett
"Working for a nationally-syndicated television show is notable." No its not. He's a storyboard artist (with one IMBD credit). I'm sure it's a nice career but a lot of people have nice careers. He's not even remotely close to being notable enough to have an article, for instance. Herostratus (talk) 07:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

2011 rape
Sweet holy Jesus. OK let's think about how to handle this. Obviously something has gone very badly wrong in the town of Cleveland, Texas.

We are dealing with a community that must be in great shock. First of all, its been revealed to them that there is something very badly wrong with a fairly large number of their young men. Denial would be a natural response. Second of all, a large number of the town's young men are (if the arrests result in convictions) going not on to graduation and the beginning of their real lives, but to prison for a considerable stretch of years. These are people's friends, nephews, and brothers. Shock, grief, and anger would be an expected response. Hopefully the town will find itself and direct its anger properly in time (and not just at the young men but perhaps in the mirror).

On the other hand, it'd be reasonable to say that it wouldn't be fair to our readers to present the town of Cleveland like any other normal town - it has this railroad, it has that school, the population is such-and-such, yadda yadda, end of story. It's not a normal town.

I don't think its correct to hang it on that Quanell X. The Chronicle story pretty clearly indicates that a lot of people feel as he does. And it looks that Times was unfairly criticized, to some extent.

Anyway, I rewrote it to try to make it fair as possible. It leans a little bit toward making the town look better than maybe it should, as it emphasizes criticism of the Times quite a bit. However, as I said, let's assume that they're in shock and give them a little bit of a break. Herostratus (talk) 23:55, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely sure how the Times was unfairly criticised. Personally, I find the outrage over the failure to quote people who found the act as deplorable as it is, to be somewhat overblown. On the other hand, everyone quoted has a pretty serious conflict of interest. Do you think that the 'anonymous phone calls' have been coming from the general population of the town, or do you think it's more reasonable to put them down to the criminals concerned and their supporters? Nevard (talk) 06:16, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's astonishing there isn't a Texas gang rape page yet. It'd have no difficulty meeting the criteria of WP:EVENT, as its implications go far beyond the incident itself.—Biosketch (talk) 11:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The Times was unfairly criticized because when they reported the incident, they made it look like the residents thought it more or less justified. So a couple of outlets said "Look, this was a horrific scenario. It is flat out not possible that the residents think its justified. So you must be be guilty of bad reporting". But according to the Houston Chronicle story, it seems indeed true a lot of residents do think it was justified. So the Times wasn't necessarily guilty of bad reporting at all. (As I said, I believe and hope that these residents are basically in PTS shock mode and don't really believe what they have said. But the Times does have to report what people say.) Herostratus (talk) 01:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but you seem to misunderstanding the reality of the incident. There certainly are a number of people related to the perpetrators of this horrific rape, or who feel some kind of kinship to them, who are prepared to provide sound bites to lazy reporters. And there also seem to be some who identify with the perpetrators for some sort of racial reason, like Quannel X, the main instigator of any sort of group opposition to the prosecution of those who committed this crime. If your town was the target of some good ol' community organising, would you even give your name to the media to become a target of the vile death threats of the supporters of the rapists in this case? Would you go further, push your profile out there enough that a NYT reporter would notice you? Nevard (talk) 23:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * When 19 men in a small town are charged with raping an 11 year old girl over a 3 month period, and the alleged crimes get national and worldwide news coverage, it should be mentioned in the article about the town. Censoring coverage so the alleged crimes, and the resulting racial tension are not even mentioned would be failure of WP:NPOV. The blaming of the victim has also been noted in the national press. At some point, continuing press coverage of the trials and investigation may come to overwhelm the article, and then the alleged crimes should be spun off into a separate article and a brief summary kept in the article  on the town. Edison (talk) 14:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about videos being used as references... I don't have a problem with videos as supplemental material in external links - but note that they must be labled as (Flash video) (Template:YouTube works for this), but citations are core to an article, and the problems with videos are that they are not available to some users (and also that they are not searchable or printable, but that also applies to off-line refs). In addition, the video provided opened with an unskippable advertisement... I don't know what rule applies, but I would think that that is not allowed, so I removed the video ref. Herostratus (talk) 03:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Several paragraphs covering this event was removed from the article today. I reverted to restore the content however the event was removed again. Should the event remain in the article? Postoak (talk) 07:07, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

You say, "OK let's think about how to handle this." That's simple. You start a new Wiki entry on the event. You do NOT include it in a General Information entry. The gang rape is breaking news, NOT general community information. Should we also include the number of births in November? How about how many injuries/deaths/damage from the last hurricane? How about the tornado? NO! You don't include "breaking news events!" This city entry is about the long term, not the short. You say, "It's not a normal town." You are wrong. It's a "normal town" where something bad happened. To judge an entire town of 10,000 on the actions of 20 (or even 50, not that anywhere near that number of people were involved), is not only unfair, but stupid. Who died and made you G_d that you can condemn an entire city from the actions of such a few? Speaking of G_d, that chron.com link you tag as "Sweet holy Jesus" is dead. See even the Houston Chronicle, 45 miles from Cleveland, has dumped that story as old news.

Anyway, if you want to write something about the gang rape, make a new Wiki entry as everyone else does with that type of dated information. But it has no business in a city general information entry. LazLong Sr 03:50, 24 November 2011


 * You have no tact at all, sir. --MadameArsenic (talk) 00:55, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "Tact" is overrated. One should navigate this trip of life on the facts, and to how many decimal places!  What I wrote are facts. If you find otherwise, then we have something to discuss. LazLong Sr] (talk) 03:55, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's consider the paragraph:

In 2011, 19 suspects were arrested for repeated gang rapes of an 11-year-old girl after identification from cell phone video they recorded of one incident. It is suspected that several more may be involved. The incident, which was reported in the national media, caused much consternation and division in the town. Relatives of the alleged child rapists and some other citizens were quoted in early media reports blaming the victim, and the victim's family was harassed, but the New York Times was also criticized for presenting the town's reaction with an overly negative slant. and the Times subsequently published a clarification.


 * NOTE - Due to the inclusion of Wiki-page style reference links which mess up the common flow of this TALK page, the following reply will appear twice.
 * I have repeatedly stated if one wants this crime to appear in Wiki, a stand-alone separate article is the only intelligent option. It just doesn't have a place in the city's page.  Personally, I don't think breaking news is really appropriate in Wiki, especially considering far worse crimes are committed daily and there aren't Wiki pages on them.  Take some place in the general area with about the same number of people, say the University of Houston.  There are no Wiki pages for the crimes, far worse than gang rape, that have been committed on that campus.  But if someone thinks it worth their time, stand alone Wiki pages can be created for every breaking news story in history I suppose.  LazLong Sr (talk) 02:33, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Political Ads in Notable People Section
Removed political ad from Notable people. 108.84.213.162 (talk) 07:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

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2010 rape again
++++++++++++++++++++++++++ — Preceding unsigned comment added by LazLong Sr (talk • contribs) 16:35, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

For some reason, this information was reentered into the City of Cleveland Texas main page after all agreed it was not a proper entry in such a page (please note criminal offenses are not entered into other city pages. As was agreed, if such should appear in wiki, it should be on it's own, stand-alone page. LazLong Sr (talk) 13:05, 15 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Well I sure didn't agree. Removing the material in its entirely smacks of whitewashing to me. Let's have a proper RfC. Herostratus (talk) 23:56, 16 August 2018 (UTC)


 * To me, the only reason to brake from Wiki norms and include a "now seven-year-old criminal news story" involving a few people on a city-of-10,000's Wiki info page is an attempt to persecute an entire town for political or personal reasons.

LazLong Sr (talk) 13:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Just thought I'd add this :

If you look at Chicago, Il (a place where hundreds of people were murdered during 1920s) wiki page, this is the entire comment concerning the period: "" The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era.[75] Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.[76]" Hundreds murdered and it ranks two sentences, and ONE of said sentences is about arguably one of the most famous organized-crime mass-murders in history.LazLong Sr (talk) 09:26, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

RfC: 2011 rapes
How should this article handle the 2011 rapes (if at all)?

Option 1) Include the following material, in a subsection ("2011 rapes") of the History section:

Option 2) A shorter description, maybe a couple sentences, at the end of the History section and not in a separate subsection. Something maybe like:

Option 3) Break out the material (basically the option 1 material from above) into a separate article.

Option 4) Nothing, no mention.

Option 5) Other, describe. Herostratus (talk) 00:27, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Survey

 * Option 1 (i.e. roughly the current version). In the longer term, it might make sense to create a stand-alone article, given the national and international coverage, and summarize it here. But I'm saying that without having read a lot about it; I'd want to do that reading first before recommending a separate article. In the meantime, the summary we have looks about right. Comparisons to crime elsewhere don't work; this is a very small town, so clearly the impact was greater. SarahSV (talk) 23:56, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Option 1. This is an extremely notable event for this town, and in my opinion useful information to know for many readers, probably. I expounded on this in detail in the section below. Herostratus (talk) 01:02, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Option 2 or 3 this should be discussed somewhere, but the current versions seems excessive. I know that a lot of similar cases in England have (what I feel is excessive) coverage in their own articles Rochdale child sex abuse ring. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 17:45, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Option 3 or 4. First, be clear this is NOT "an extremely notable event for this town." A notable event, maybe, but not even in the top five or six in the last eight years, and as I've pointed out, those things - from many people missing-and-presumed dead to the most massive rain event in history of the United States, which ruined hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of people within Cleveland - aren't mentioned in the city's article at all. By the way, I've edited my part here to follow your format and clean up poor punctuation LazLong Sr (talk) 02:20, 31 August 2018 (UTC)LazLong Sr (talk) 02:17, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Option 1 This sad incident shouldn't be in its own article but needs to be well-represented here. For people from this area, this was just a terrible thing out of centuries of history in the area. For the rest of us, nothing important ever happened there until this gang rape. We discuss said rape accordingly. (Summoned by bot) Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 13:22, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Option 2 and possibly 3. This terrible crime should be mentioned in the History section of the article. If it is a notable event in the history of crimes in the USA, a separate article should be dedicated to it or it should be detailed in an article dedicated to similar crimes. Borsoka (talk) 04:40, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Option 1. It is surprising that this event has not yet made it into its own, independent article. Arguments to the contrary are offering nothing but "there have been worse events," which, of course, is never a valid argument. It's essentially the reverse of the well known, false argument that goes "we already have similar bad stuff in Wikipedia". A notable event stands on its own. Wikipedia goes by sources and the event has been widely reported not just locally but internationally, for being an extraordinary crime (repeated sexual assaults on an underage victim by a group of people). We need a succinct mention of the event in the article about the town and a "main article" tag to the independent article. Option 1 offers the best way forward. -The Gnome (talk) 08:12, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Option 2 now that a separate article exists at 2010 gang rapes in Cleveland, Texas. feminist (talk) 19:06, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion
See also Talk:Cleveland, Texas above for previous discussion. Herostratus (talk) 03:25, 18 August 2018 (UTC)


 * If we go with Option3, might want to include this -

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Gang-rape-victim-now-14-tells-TV-station-she-s-4536911.php LazLong Sr (talk) 13:14, 24 August 2018 (UTC)


 * So some points: there is (understandably) a tendency for inhabited-place articles to get whitewashed. Every town of 5,000 people, has, potentially, about 4,500 who would like the article to not say anything bad about that town. Towns are not protected by WP:BLP (I asked at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons and didn't get anyone saying so). So we want to be careful to avoid being too nice here; that's not our remit. As I say this is a very notable event in the history of this town, probably the only time the town made state and national news in any significant way, so not including it would be kind of like having the Article on say Phil Spector not describing how how he was tried and convicted for murder.


 * 21 people were convicted (not just accused -- convicted (or pled)) and that is about one person in 350 in the town. And assuming that males 13-25 make up 10% of the 7,675 population (38% of the town is under 25, and let's say half of those are 12 or under and not involved for the crime, that's 19%, and half of those are female, so 10%) that means that 2.7% of the towns population of teenage boys and young men were convicted of rape in this one incident and most went to jail. I mean this is significant.


 * As to "basically standard for every other American city Wiki entry" (to not include stuff like this), I mean there aren't a lot of these events in the Wikipedia because there aren't a lot of these events in real life. It these events were common that'd be argument for not including this one. But they're not common. Most of our articles on American populated places don't mention mass shootings or large fires or tornadoes, so I guess you could say it is "basically standard for every other American city Wiki entry" to not include those either when they do occur. But that's not the deal, really.


 * In addition, is this something that is useful for the reader to know about, when researching this town? Yeah I think it says something about the gestalt of this town, yes. Is it more cogent, useful, interesting, or enlightening than "The Austin Memorial Library Center offers a wide range of services to the community" or that "Cleveland operates under the Council-Manager form of government" or that "The Tarkington Independent School District, located east southeast of the city of Cleveland, also has a Cleveland zipcode" or that [baseball player] "Jason Grimsley was born in Cleveland and went to school in Tarkington ISD, just east of town" or that "George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston is the closest airport with commercial airline service" and so on. It might be more cogent, useful, interesting, or enlightening to some people. It is to me. I want to know what a populated place is like, not its nearest commercial airport; others will have different needs and that's fine. But don't shut readers me me down.


 * The article doesn't mention race... it probably should (all the convicted were African-American), since the affair "stirred racial tensions that threaten to split the East Texas hamlet", and this was devastating to the African-American community. Quanell X said that there where white perps too, but they were given a pass. (Cleveland is a about half non-Hispanic white, about 1/4 African-American, about 1/4 Hispanic; it's poor, and in East Texas. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess how toxic, corrupt, and oppressive the town's power structure probably is). Anyway point is this was a huge deal to the town. Quanell X's point of view, and the whole back-and-forth with the New York Times is included, and if you cut it down too much you're going to provide a baised precis, in my opinion.


 * If we want our town articles to be of the nature of "Well, there's three parks, and a school, and everybody's nice and everything's fine and birds sing and nothing bad ever happens here" that's different, but in that case maybe you should make a case for including towns under WP:BLP. There's actually case (but weak IMO) for doing that, but that's a different issue. Herostratus (talk) 01:02, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

++++++++++++

FYI: I am flying by the seat of my pants as to wiki rules, just using common sense and hoping I've followed ya'll's rules. Doing my best and trying to be fair. This shows this editor's base ignorance of the facts concerning the city (well above 10,000 not 5,000) and it's history, as well as the city-area identified in the Galveston Daily News (the newspaper of record in the area going back to the 1800's) on everything from it's surprising establishment in the 1800's to near centuries later when the hundreds of homes and thousands of people were impacted in 2017 by Hurricane Harvey which made INTERNATIONAL news (but not on the wiki city-info pages - odd, if such solitary breaking-news events of lessor import should be included) --- and ALL events (such as murderous actions by humans, or hurricanes, tornadoes, terror at the hands of humans, including idiot attacks perpetrated during the intervening years, national headlines concerning this city included - there were things, even silly things, such as the city's mayor and local newspaper editor (making PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS nation-wide for three days in the 90's {please note this is THREE TIMES how long as the event in question was on national TV} - yes, even Dan Rather did an op/ed piece on national TV about "the Hat" and should it be forcibly removed; to the fear and concern related to the recent (since 2010) 30+ unsolved deaths/disappearances in the area (CNN, FOX, PBS, NPR, ABC, CBS, NBC) ; as well as extending to open-source statistics showing it is becoming the nation's fastest-growing area school district expanding by 20% each of the last four years (to our math-challenged folks out there, yes! that's a 20% increase, compounded by another 20% increase, again compounded another 20%; then moreover another 20% increase-actually 25% but let's not quibble- over a four year period). This statement shows the individual's lack of knowledge of the area as well as their ignorance of facts concerning the individuals involved. [concerning city of Cleveland population facts (well above 10,000 not 5,000)} Remember: There are three levels of falsehoods, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics," according to Mr. Clemens. - sad - Please note, these people were NOT all residents in the city (not "town") as the persecutor ascribes - The Cleveland address system is RURAL and covers hundreds of square miles outside of the City of Cleveland proper, heck, it includes three counties. Please look into where the individuals involved actually resided as opposed to assuming someone with a Cleveland address being in the City of Cleveland, or even in it's County of Liberty. Really? Do you not read or watch the national (let's leave out international) news? 99 people were shot in Chicago over two days a few weeks ago - does this happen all the time? is that on that city's wiki page? How many people were shot in Cleveland Texas during the last eight years(see this item's time-line)? Yea, right. Even per-capita this doesn't come close to balancing out and neither do other major crimes like rape. The persecutor's stripes are showing. WOW! I had NO IDEA so many folks involved in wiki were mind readers ("exercise to the reader to guess")!! It explains so much!!! Well that's it right there, y'all need to 'guess' at reality 'cause y'all must be WAY advanced above the little folk you lord over, according to this individual. Uh no. But please provide something like proof as to lie by Quanell_X --  You won't find any. More over, if you look into him you'll learn his record on telling the truth didn't improve from this lie! Okay, since none of the above involves reality, anyone else noticing this is proving to be more a personal vendetta against a small, East Texas city than a wiki-page thing? BTW, one of the things about including such "breaking news" (or "dated" as it once was referred to) doesn't show that today's Cleveland, and school district, is more than 60% Hispanic, a percentage that's growing. That's why "breaking or dated news" isn't even considered in other wiki city pages.
 * First the statement concerning this breaking news event in 2010/11: " As I say this is a very notable event in the history of this town, probably the only time the town made state and national news in any significant way"
 * Second: "21 people were convicted (not just accused - convicted (or pled^sic^)) and that is about one person in 350 in the town."
 * Third (do I have to keep numbering these things or can I just use "NEXT"?) the person says' " I mean there aren't a lot of these events in the Wikipedia because there aren't a lot of these events in real life. "
 * Fourth - of course this attack on a small city (not the individuals who perpetrated the crime) goes on to state, "Yeah I think it says something about the gestalt of this town, yes." AND ... (Cleveland is a about half non-Hispanic white, about 1/4 African-American, about 1/4 Hispanic; it's poor, and in East Texas. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess how toxic, corrupt, and oppressive the town's power structure probably is""
 * Five - " this was devastating to the African-American community."
 * Okay, I'm just throwing this in --- This individual's second-to-last paragraph includes Quanell_X and to my surprise there's a mention of this event in that guy's wiki post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanell_X --- please note I've never edited it - it's crap, and honestly it proves my point better than something I touched.

Oh, BTW I have to wonder how much "local" info has been absorbed into "reporters" from the New York Times who've NEVER been there ? Yea, me either. That's okay. If you read the stuff in "Talk" section ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cleveland,_Texas&action=edit&section=2), we see much of the reporting by Eastern media has had to be "set back" or disavowed by the publications as void of fact. Sorry, I keep forgetting that tilde thing. LazLong Sr (talk) 09:27, 29 August 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LazLong Sr (talk • contribs) 09:12, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for responding. Don't worry about the rules, you're fine and haven't gone against any rules, and anyway we're not rule-bound here, it's content we care about. Not addressing everything you said, but some counterpoints:
 * The article gives 7,954 as the population of Cleveland (which I said; "5,000" was in illustration of a generic small town), the 2010 census give 7,765 (there won't be another census til 2020, altho the 2017 estimate is 8,125) so it doesn't seem to be "well above 10,000" as you state.
 * I understand that you are exercised about this subject, but there's no need to be insulting, describing not using your (unref'd) 10,000 as "base ignorance" and so forth. That's not how we roll here, and it's not conducive to reasoned discussion.
 * Some of your arguments are not strong, on consideration. Chicago (metro) is as populous as 1200 Clevelands, and has many many more things to be said about it, consequently the article is about as long as an article should be and there's just no room for describing most individual crimes. There *is* a section called "Crime" in that article, plus a separate article Crime in Chicago (as well as Timeline of organized crime in Chicago). We also have articles on Richard Speck and... well, there is Category:Crime in Chicago which has 28 pages and 4 subcategories. So I mean the subject is covered. In separate articles because otherwise the Chicago article would be too long. This is not true of Cleveland, Texas, altho Option 3 is presented to break out the incident into a separate article (I oppose because why have two short articles, but it's reasonable).


 * But particularly, I have a question: what is your personal relationship with Cleveland Texas? Per WP:COI any such relationship would not necessarily invalidate your points, but it would be a data point. We don't want to whitewash *any* article (except WP:BLP articles) for any reason. (I don't have a "personal vendetta" here, have never been to Cleveland or known anybody who has, in fact have never heard of it except in connection with this incident. I just have an aversion to whitewashing, am leery of it, and have seen it in many town articles.) Herostratus (talk) 01:38, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

I looked for examples of notable crimes that marked a town to see how we handle them:
 * The 1955 lynching of Emmet Till is in the lead of Money, Mississippi and has its own section.
 * There's no mention in Mobile, Alabama of the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald, one of the last lynchings in the United States.
 * In Jasper, Texas, there's a paragraph on the 1998 Murder of James Byrd Jr. by white supremacists.
 * In Rotherham, there's a section on the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal.
 * Similarly, the Rochdale child sex abuse ring is mentioned in Rochdale.

SarahSV (talk) 04:35, 30 August 2018 (UTC)


 * No offense Herostratus, but I've been responding for a while. I have a life, and spending all this time (going on seven years now) rehashing the SAME things is a waste of it.  Especially when you offer something I put forth as an alternative back in Nov. 2011 (even though, as I said then, I didn't like it) - put it in it's own wiki page.  It's not what I want.  You say it's not what you want.  It gets the event in wiki, so it seems that makes it what's commonly called a workable compromise.  Now, like you, I'll not respond to all of your comments, which sees us returning to the endless back-and-forth which has accomplished nothing in seven years:
 * First, we're not discussing "a generic small town" as you refer to it. We are talking a REAL city with REAL people living normal lives, the overwhelming majority of who had no connection to the event of this discussion - unlike many other events in the past eight years.  You suggested it's population was "5,000" - I said it was over 10,000 now (which I still stand by) but even using your own later population of "8,125" it clearly closer to 10,000 than 5,000.  Also, you say "21 people were convicted (not just accused -- convicted (or pled)sic) and that is about one person in 350 in the town."  That might be a valid point if all the 21 were from the City of Cleveland, which they are not, many weren't even from the same county as the city. Remember, "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."
 * Now you say, "there's no need to be insulting." Correct, suggesting I was "whitewashing" the City of Cleveland wiki page was highly insulting.  Suggestion: if you don't want to open yourself up to insults, don't insult someone else.  Friends?  BTW, SJW's don't have to have any connection at all to events or places involved to seek vendettas.
 * Herostratus, I don't know you from Adam so you could be related to the victim - or just another SJW - for all I know, but you feel comfortable demanding answers from me as to why I care in this case. I despise people to try to attack the entire population of a community over the actions of a very few.  Yes, I know things about this case (and hundreds of others) you don't, though I have NOT posted anything not backed up by the common wiki manner.  I covered the story as a member of the major Houston electronic media and actually interviewed the victim, her mother, many of the males involved (not all because some of the slimy POS lived two counties away and went on the lamb, while others simply refused comment), and their families.  Personal opinion: they got off too light, (most are out of prison I believe) and it was a horrible thing to happen to that girl.  That said, I've covered far worse crimes all over the Greater Houston Area, and they don't appear anywhere on Wikipedia, much less on the city-pages where they happened.

FYI - Take Hempstead, Texas where a state trooper arrested a Black woman who later killed herself in the city jail. It was in the national (international) media for more than a year - Black Lives Matter - not a word about it in Wikipedia page for Hempstead. That's just one of dozens and it involved a death.
 * Folks, read the entire Talk Page discussion - far above - which has gone on close to a decade. The people who wrote and defended the original hit-piece entry of almost 10,000 words said plainly that ALL the people in this small city were somehow at fault and evil.  Heck read Herostratus entry - the first under the topic on the Talk Page (23:55, 17 March 2011).  Among other such Herostratus says, "On the other hand, it'd be reasonable to say that it wouldn't be fair to our readers to present the town of Cleveland like any other normal town - it has this railroad, it has that school, the population is such-and-such, yadda yadda, end of story. It's not a normal town. " The ENTIRE TOWN (including its citizens) isn't "normal" accord to Herostratus !   There's more, read it.  Note, the talk page has been edited as well so you might want to read those changes.

LazLong Sr (talk) 04:15, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I hear you. Sorry you're upset, but that happens sometimes with encyclopedia editing I guess. If I've been personally harsh, I am sorry.


 * S alright, I mean if I have made any any mistakes regarding the various populated areas, OK. Cleveland doesn't have a metro area (it's in Houston's), and it's in Lincoln County, but if there's a "greater Cleveland" including some nearby unincorporated areas (I gather that there is), that's fine, and let's include that in the article if we can. The precise population of Cleveland isn't important. It is basically a matter of opinion I think, you have your opinion and I have mine, and we're going to have to agree to disagree I guess.


 * I told you I have no connection whatsoever in any way, shape, or form with the city of Cleveland, Texas, nor any particular interest either. So I again ask the same of you, do you have a WP:COI (Conflict of Interest) on this issue, or not? Because if you do, that doesn't necessarily invalidate any points you make, but you do have to declare it. Herostratus (talk) 22:47, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Herostratus, I'm not upset. I'm tired of this. Now to the next part,   To your final paragraph: I reply "so you say" and "I answered your question.  Try rereading the post above yours." LazLong Sr (talk) 02:15, 7 September 2018 (UTC) LazLong Sr (talk) 02:15, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

FYI: Cleveland is not in "Lincoln County" LazLong Sr (talk) 02:17, 7 September 2018 (UTC) LazLong Sr (talk) 02:17, 7 September 2018 (UTC) LazLong Sr (talk) 02:20, 7 September 2018 (UTC) LazLong Sr (talk) 02:20, 7 September 2018 (UTC)LazLong Sr (talk) If you're interested in the Greater Cleveland area, I did a google search (try it sometime) and found this graphic from the Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce -- https://www.clevelandtxchamber.com/market-area --. Two things should be noted, First: this area population is in excess of 100,000 people. Second: Some of the individuals convicted in this heinous crime lived not only out of the City of Cleveland, but outside the Greater Cleveland geographical area identified by the Greater Cleveland Chamber. I'd not be surprised this is of no interest to the PTB here, anymore the first sentence of the entry in question "Twenty-one residents were convicted" being a bald-faced lie matters.LazLong Sr (talk) 02:43, 7 September 2018 (UTC) LazLong Sr (talk) 02:43, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, since I don't live in my parent's basement, I have had real world commitments. I see we now have both a separate page, AND the longish comment on the City of Cleveland main page. How simply SJW of you. Knowing early on what the "professional" Wiki worms would conspire to do, I've become disinterested. That said, I, through the media conglomerate for which I work, have been working with proponents of the EU Copyright Directive (11&13) to ensure the EU knows if it goes into effect as is, there will be legal challenges by hundreds-of-thousands of other non-profit organizations demanding the same considerations it gave Wiki and other nonprofit open source software platforms. Herostratus, thanks for the inspiration. And thanks again for linking to some of my media coverage of the original breaking-news event. LazLong Sr (talk) 04:39, 27 October 2018 (UTC)LazLong Sr (talk) 04:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Pertinent Content
I am curious and perturbed by the inclusion of a solitary criminal incident as introductory item in the Cleveland, TX article! This is certainly not common place here (we live in Cleveland) and inappropriate. I could see it possibly included in a category about safety or crime later in this item. There is so much positive history to put in the forefront. I am learning so much about this sleepy town that is waking up to incredible growth and good things. Like the reviving of the Texas Theater for starters! Thank you Dodi1955 (talk) 20:09, 11 August 2023 (UTC)