Talk:Death of Nex Benedict

mutual combat
changed the quote in the lead to “instance of mutual combat”. most sources use quote to attribute it to spoken by the DA.

think it makes sense to keep it like that, instead of suggesting a jury has rules absolutely that it was mutual combat. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 01:39, 8 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I believe you are misrepresenting the question here.
 * It's not about whether or not we attribute it to the DA or not, but whether we need to include a longer quotation from him when we can just say that he deemed the altercation to be mutual combat. Neither phrasing suggests a jury has ruled something or makes any mention of a jury, and both phrasings make it clear that this is the opinion of the DA.
 * I personally find the longer quotation to be unnecessary, because the essense of it is captured by saying that the DA "deemed the altercation to be mutual combat"... I'm not sure what more we get out of it by adding "instance of" in quote marks. Peter L Griffin (talk) 16:03, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Because it is an unusual wording, which is why most sources like quote it full as "instance of mutual combat" as well, so we should keep it in its completeness as attributed by RS. Raladic (talk) 16:24, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * What part of it is unusual?
 * "Instance of mutual combat" seems to be a fairly unremarkable turn of phrase. Peter L Griffin (talk) 16:26, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * mutual combat links to a legal phrasing. the DA has theorized that this legal concept would prevent any conviction and has refused to prosecute based on that.
 * but as the legal question is not answered by a jury, including a quote gives proper deference to the fact that this is the DAs reasoning and not the full legal process User:Sawerchessread (talk) 21:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * How does the quotation marks make it any more so that saying the DA deemed it to be mutual combat vs. the DA deemed it to be "an instance of mutual combat."
 * They seem to say the same thing, and the first version does it more succinctly. Either way makes it clear it's the DA's opinion. Anything about a jury seems to be reading way too far into this. Peter L Griffin (talk) 21:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ah, i see your point. I think my argument is incorrect then.
 * raladic is correct on his point though. nearly every newssource uses "mutual combat" in some form of quotation around it for a reason, and if we are reflecting the news source, we should include the quotes as well. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 23:23, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * News orgs have different manuals of style from wikipedia. This is normal and expected as we have different aims and missions.
 * On wikipedia, per MOS:QUOTEPOV, "Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words such as supposedly or so-called, might be inferred."
 * Mutual combat is a non-emotive concise opinion. Peter L Griffin (talk) 23:38, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The thing that makes the phrase unusual is the addition of "instance of" which can carry certain contextual connotations, which is why I believe the phrase is also quoted by news organizations with those 4 words together, they also agree that it is unusual wording.
 * "instance of" often is a synonym for "example of" and can carry a connotation of slight uncertainty, which especially in the context that is the whole article and it being a point of contention (whether it really was a mutual combat or not), we are better off also quoting this unusual wording as-is, rather than try to re-interpret it and ommit the phrase as quoted. Raladic (talk) 03:32, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * it is worth noting that a search about mutual combat on wiki shows varied results around if its quoted or not.
 * theres 4 bios where an MMA/street fighter is openly challenging folks under mutual combat. as both parties clearly are doing it, there is no quotes. as this is clearly not some organized street fighting we should not consider this.
 * there is a single instance in zac efrons bio where authorities refuse to charge him cuz of the mutual combat defense. no quotes there. of note the citation on the zac efron piece is slightly wrong and includes no phrase “mutual combat”, though a quick news search shows that other sites did report on it and also used quotation marks
 * and there is Hickok–Tutt_shootout which does use quotes.
 * i think wikipedia is inconsistent withregards to quotes here mostly because this term does not show up that often. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 04:45, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * There shouldn't be quotes though per manual of style. Whether or not other articles use it incorrectly is not the point.
 * It's a non-emotive term, and the MOS says that adding quotes be akin to qualifying with weasel words. Peter L Griffin (talk) 04:51, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Removal of reactions
hey PLG, i saw your removal of a lot of the reaction info.

I think we can include a lot of it still.. As a general rule of thumb, if there is a news site covering much of it, it should be considered notable.

I think we can subsection the reactions though and give it a bit more structure. I'll try my hand at it. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 23:25, 8 April 2024 (UTC)


 * The ones I removed involved non-notable people and were covered by only one or two sources, which often weren't reliable independent news orgs. Peter L Griffin (talk) 23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * more over, news cites cover a lot of stuff. We certainly can't include it all. If it's a one off quote from a random guy on the street, or some random parent in a school board meeting, it's probably not worth including in this article. We already have a lot of quotes here that say more or less the same thing. Peter L Griffin (talk) 23:50, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Per WP:NNC, though sub items within the article may not warrant their own article right now (I.e. nobody would argue for a separate article "Federal Investigation into Death of Nex Benedict" or "Vigils held for Nex Benedict"), we should note that there are multiple articles for both the federal investigation and for vigils held for Nex Benedict.
 * I've added info about the federal investigation back in. We should also consider adding in the info about vigils and protests as well. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:40, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ah wait, im silly there is already a section about the federal investigation. removing mine.
 * we should still include info about vigils/protests User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, why do we have reactions in the investigation section, and then also have a separate reactions section? Can we have them one place or the other, but not both? Peter L Griffin (talk) 01:08, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think this entire article is a bit heavy on opinions. Much of this can be condense or elided... we have an entire Aftermath section too full of more opinions. Peter L Griffin (talk) 01:11, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Sawerchessread why did you just undo my last productive edit? I thought we were past the editwarring. Peter L Griffin (talk) 01:21, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that was a mistake. apologies.
 * I must have started editing when you started editing. Did not realize. Will fix. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 01:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Was it your intention to revert my change putting Aftermath after Investigation? If so, I'll self-revert so as to not edit-war, but it is my current understanding that this was moved back unintentionally? Peter L Griffin (talk) 04:41, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * also, ah we do have a vigils section. Apologies!
 * Sigh, I guess I need to read this article more closely.
 * In terms of opinions, it's hard to say. I think we def do have a lot of quoting of a lot of organizations. We are also doing a play by play on the exact date when a organization responds.
 * I'm looking at other events though which have reactions similar to this.
 * Charleston_church_shooting has a lot of the same style of reactions. Apparently Murder of George Floyd had so many reactions, it split into its own article here Reactions_to_the_murder_of_George_Floyd... not to mention Reactions_to_the_George_Floyd_protests. There is some summarization of similar responses, but some responses warrant its own paragraph.
 * Some of the responses sections for similar deaths and suicides of LGBTQ folks vary from abbreviated to very in-depth. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 01:24, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * In general, main pattern i see among the profiles on List_of_suicides_of_LGBT_people is that the less high-profile the suicide, the more abbreviated and summarized the reactions are.
 * The more high-profile, the more in-depth reactions seem to be.
 * In general, I'd argue that as Nex's suicide is a bit high profile, we can probably include more opinions. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 01:29, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * In this example here, the opinions/punditry/analysis from uninvolved parties is kept within the aftermath and reaction sections and not also in the investigation section. Hard facts come first. I'll edit to more closely resemble that. Peter L Griffin (talk) 04:39, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hard facts such as?  Liliana UwU  (talk / contributions) 23:01, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Such as what involved parties have said in interviews, what investigators have determined, etc. What some non-profit president thinks doesn't belong in that section; punditry belongs in the reactions section. Peter L Griffin (talk) 23:39, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I am in general favour of a pass that does reduce the amount of what are essentially news article lines included purely because someone said them in favour of a slightly more encyclopedic structure. However I already see cuts that are not fully baked being tossed in. Favour the removal of overlong inclusions of material over total removal of sourced material. If a piece of sourced material becomes an obvious stub when made concise, that itself can help signal that it needs to be removed but slowly does it here. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 07:25, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Example; a lot of the trimming done to the vigils section, in particular the quote removals are appropriate, as the edit comment says the overemphasis of certain vigils with quote excerpts was worth editing. However the total removal of many held vigils is over cutting to my eye. A "laundry list" without overlong description is a good way to properly describe the set of vigils held without overemphasising any. The new vigils section essentially contains almost none and in doing so overemphasized the ones that were not trimmed. It's one thing to cut the overlong description of the parasol patrol as an organisation, another to cut a sourced report their vigil entirely, same for the Rainbow Youth project.Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 07:37, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * yeah, a single sentence listing vigils should be enough to point folks looking for info on wikipedia to know it exists. if they want to learn more, they can do their own research by clicking on the source User:Sawerchessread (talk) 16:48, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I added the list of vigils back in. Here is the current diff of info removed so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_of_Nex_Benedict&diff=1218756654&oldid=1217555592
 * Its mostly just rearrangement and making stuff more concise, but we definitely could move more slowly when deleting. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 17:12, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I've also added back in a sentence about the office of civil rights investigation to the lead. It remains fairly important, as whatever counts as next steps in this event. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 17:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Gone through altercation. the phrase "I was jumped" is an important headline and quote in most of these stories. Should include on Wikipedia. added some of my own edits in too.
 * Reactions definitely needed to be cleaned up, especially with some of the redundancy. Some were added back in above, but the pace of change on this article remains difficult to keep up with... especially as this is all just reformatting and no new news has come out. The formatting in general seems better at least, but its hard to tell what has been wholesale deleted.
 * 13 sources seem to have been removed so far. There are also at least 20 paragraphs that have been deleted, or reformatted somehow. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 17:49, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * sigh... admin saw my edits and disagreed. guess page as is, is alright. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 20:44, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * , while is an admin, most edits that admins do are not administrative actions, and (per WP:INVOLVED) there should be a pretty hard separation.  I don't believe that edit was intended as an admin action.  That said, administrators tend to have a lot of experience as editors, and I think it was probably a good trimming per WP:NOTMEMORIAL, WP:INDISCRIMINATE.  Perhaps a good line is that vigils that were mentioned not-quite-trivially in two major news sources should go in? Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

User:Russ Woodroofe, thank you--yes, User:Sawerchessread, edits are usually not administrative actions. I'd appreciate it if you kept this talk page section a bit on focus; it reads like a running diary, and I can't really see what it is supposed to discuss--that's also because you keep making new, short paragraphs that are heavily indented, which are difficult to follow. A list of vigils is not encyclopedic content; "it's verified cause it was in the paper" is not much of an argument. It's like the "reactions" to the next school shooting: it's NOTMEMORIAL material.And now I see you're pointing at other articles, but Charleston_church_shooting is totally on point and focused on events directly relevant to the shooting, unlike the vague "there were vigils". For Charleston there were vigils too, but they're not in the article. And I don't like Reactions to the murder of George Floyd, esp. not with the responses with the flaggies--but that Scotland decided to not export tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear to the US, that's actually important. Drmies (talk) 13:53, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Lead sentence
Because this article is about the death of Nex Benedict, it seems to be vitally important to include known information about Nex's actual death in the lead sentence. At the moment, reliable sources say that Nex's death was a suicide caused by a drug overdose. This has been established for a month now, and no credible alternative has been produced.

I argue this should be stated in Wikivoice. But even if we disagree about whether such a claim should be attributed, it should still be included in the lead sentence qualified or not. Peter L Griffin (talk) 00:32, 14 April 2024 (UTC)


 * “At the moment, reliable sources say that Nex's death was a suicide caused by a drug overdose.”
 * Oh, yeah? Actual reliable sources (i.e., experts) would very much beg to differ. Check it:
 * https://www.advocate.com/news/nex-benedict-drugs-toxicology-experts 80.193.98.150 (talk) 14:03, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That article you're citing is from before the full report was released. Please pay attention to the dates involved here. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 14:21, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And if a forensic report cites an overdose of caffeine as cause of death in someone who died from injuries relating to being run over by a bus, that doesn't give the forensic report more weight than experts stating that caffeine overdose doesn't lead to death from crush injuries weeks or months before the release of the forensic report. Nex was murdered and their overdose, real or putative, had nothing to do with their death. 80.193.98.150 (talk) 15:39, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * provide the sources from after the report was published that suggest that User:Sawerchessread (talk) 16:58, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Your personal beliefs are not WP:RS. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 19:28, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And RS blindly listen to the final report of the autopsy done by a state who hired the Libs of TikTok girl as an advisor to their school libraries.  Liliana UwU  (talk / contributions) 20:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Look, I think it was a shitty decision too. But we can't just pick and choose. We're stuck with the report accepted by reliable sources, unless the family chooses to challenge it further or independent investigations find other evidence & publish that. Right now, we're stuck. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 14:27, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * same. anti lgbtq advocates love this report without the broader context….
 * id argue sticking someone in a pressure cooker and invalidating them at every turn is a slow inevitable murder and killing by the state… but wikipedia has to be “neutral” according to the majority…
 * even if the majority are in the wrong. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 22:55, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Folks, lets remember WP:NOTFORUM -- I feel like we're starting to veer into a general discussion of the topic. We certainly follow reliable sources on Wikipedia.  I will note that reliable sources are careful to report on what the medical examiner has said, and do not state it as a fact; Wikipedia should do the same.  (It is certainly remarkable that the local authorities have determined that beating someone insensible is a proportionate reaction to having water poured on one; likely this is part of the reason for the caution of reliable sources.) Russ Woodroofe (talk) 08:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree. It’s essential defining information for the article topic. Zanahary (talk) 12:14, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree. It’s essential defining information for the article topic. Zanahary (talk) 12:14, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

"...which they were required by state law to use."
The lead currently says that Nex was "required by state law" to use the girls' bathroom. This is not strictly correct. The state law in question requires schools to offer an alternative in the form of a single-occupancy bathroom.

Oklahoma Senate:

CNN:

Washington Post:

The article body is similarly inaccurate when it says that "Students are legally required to use a bathroom that corresponds with sex assigned at birth". It would be more accurate to say "Students are legally prohibited from using a bathroom that does not correspond..."

Astaire (talk) 21:38, 15 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Changes made Peter L Griffin (talk) 17:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * And if the school doesn't provide single occupancy restrooms or changing rooms...? 80.193.98.150 (talk) 13:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Then the school is in violation of the aforementioned laws. Clone commando sev (talk) 04:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 16 July 2024
According to Nex Benedict’s mother, Nex has been bullied by others since the beginning of the 2023 school year.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nex-benedict-dead-oklahoma-b2501844.html TnDi Edits (talk) 13:08, 16 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Done Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:32, 16 July 2024 (UTC)