Talk:Guy Turcotte killings

Requested move 7 July 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved per BLP1E. There may be a better descriptive title than 'Guy Turcotte killings', but that can probably be decided without a formal move request. — kwami (talk) 19:31, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Guy Turcotte → Guy Turcotte affair – This article is not really a biography. The whole content is linked to the affair. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 09:13, 22 July 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 22:46, 14 July 2015 (UTC)  Ĉ i u ĵaŭde Discuss 13:26, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment: The article is primarily about the killings by Turcotte, not his wife's affair. I suggest renaming to Guy Turcotte killings or Guy Turcotte child killings. (Or perhaps Guy Turcotte murders, but was it legally murder? The issue of whether he was legally responsible for the killings seems to remain an unsettled question.) —BarrelProof (talk) 19:59, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think we need to add the word child unless there is a separate Guy Turcotte on Wikipedia who also killed people.--64.229.166.83 (talk) 23:56, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I suppose I agree, although I think that what makes the case noteworthy is that it was his children that he killed. I'll acknowledge that I sometimes tend to want to include more information in an article title than what some other people think is desirable. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

I've solicited more viewpoints for this discussion at. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:17, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose Category:Canadian murderers of children and similar categories for murders are filled with WP:BLP1E people notable only for one event. We cover them because of persistent coverage is in reliable sources. If this person were notable as a doctor and we had so much coverage of their accomplishments in that profession that we needed to split his bio into a sub-article about this 1E then such consideration might be appropriate. That would be very unusual. Noting that this was an orphan, the find-link tool found a reference to him in the biography of Chloe Bellande: "In 2014 she released the short-film Will of Fortune, which was... inspired by the real-life murder trials of Guy Turcotte and Susan Wright." At least we have no need to disambiguate this name with the parenthetical (murderer). – Wbm1058 (talk) 01:36, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand that comment. Is it saying the article should not be moved because a lot of articles about Canadian murderers don't follow the WP:BLP1E policy? If so, the fact that Other stuff exists shouldn't prevent us from moving this article to a title that is aligned with BLP1E. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:48, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, this isn't an area I have a lot of experience in, and I guess a more thorough examination is in order. Look at the related WP:BIO1E policy: "When an individual is significant for his or her role in a single event, it may be unclear whether an article should be written about the individual, the event or both." Have to give this more thought, though I think we can quickly rule out an article about both. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:48, 2 August 2015 (UTC) I mean two separate articles about the person and the event. This article should cover both the person and the event, I think. Wbm1058 (talk) 00:12, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * PSEUDO also may be applicable here. "An article under the title of a person's name should substantially be a full and balanced biography of that person's public life. If the person is notable only in connection with a single event, and little or no other information is available to use in the writing of a balanced biography, that person should be covered in an article regarding the event, with the person's name as a redirect to the event article placing the information in context."
 * So, I've put him in Category:Canadian murderers of children, which is a sub-cat of Category:Murderers. This is a huge category, and substantially all of its members are titled by the names of the murders, i.e. they are titled as biographies. But how many of these people are known for anything other than being murderers? Unless they're mass-murderers, or gangsters who just happened to kill someone in the course of their other criminal activity, they are just known for one event, i.e. one murder. The alternative category for events, which is where the advice tends to want put 1E people, is Category:Murders. That category doesn't seem to have many articles that are titled as "murder events". Where are all the event articles titled, "[Murder's name] killing(s)"?
 * So maybe he really is known for more than one event. Besides the murder, there is "the marital background and the buildup" ("the affair"?) leading to the murders. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:53, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The public wouldn't care about the rest of his life story if he hadn't killed his children. Unfortunately, lots of people have unfaithful spouses and experience separation and child custody disputes, and that is not sufficiently notable for creating a Wikipedia article about each of them. The other information is only interesting to people as background information for that one event, and is not excessively extensive. If there are a lot of other articles like this one, they should be moved too. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:35, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So, it sounds like you're suggesting that the vast majority of articles in Category:American people convicted of murder should be moved. I don't know, that sounds like going against the grain in a major way. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:52, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You might be right about that, but WP:BLP1E is official Wikipedia policy. For the sake of spot-checking your assertion, I looked in that category and clicked on four articles at random. Three out of those four seemed notable for something other than a single murderous event. Kenneth Lee Boyd is notable for being the 1,000th person executed since the United States Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment. The case of Linda Carty involved a US breach of international law and an amicus curiae brief submitted by the British government to the U.S. Supreme Court, and substantial tension with England – and she may become first female British national to receive capital punishment in more than 60 years. Steven Brian Pennell was a serial killer and was convicted or suspected in five different murders, and was the first condemned man to argue his own case before the Delaware Supreme Court. Among the four, only John R. Hicks seems like a good candidate for a WP:BLP1E article renaming. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:16, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Now it sounds like you're arguing that this article should be deleted on notability grounds, because there is nothing significant about it to distinguish this from run-of-the-mill murders. The articles we keep went to the Supreme Court, or breached international law, etc. Nothing like that, then we delete on notability grounds? Wbm1058 (talk) 13:23, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't say any articles should be deleted. I just said that articles about people who are only notable for one murderous episode should be moved to titles that say they are about the murderous episode rather than about the murderer – that's simply what the WP:BLP1E policy says. If there is something else about the person that is notable, in addition to the fact that they murdered someone (e.g., an international dispute, unusual arguments put forth in their trial, a Supreme Court case, other notable crimes, something unusual about how they were later released or what happened afterwards), then it is not a BLP1E situation, and the article can be about the person. Again, that's simply what the WP:BLP1E policy says. It is not my own original theory. Obviously, there may be some grey areas in between when some judgment call is necessary, but that's the basic principle. I think the article about John R. Hicks should be moved, not deleted. See, for example, Talk:Ariel Castro kidnappings (and the redirect from Ariel Castro, the result of a move request closed on on 19 September 2013). —BarrelProof (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, I suppose the core issue in that move to Ariel Castro kidnappings was somewhat different, but the reason that there is no separate article about Ariel Castro is that he is primarily notable only for the kidnappings. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:53, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have just submitted an RM at Talk:John R. Hicks. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:11, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Note that there is also no separate article about Adam Lanza for the same reason. He is clearly notable, but WP:BLP1E is why there is no separate article about him. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:18, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Suggest re-write and new title
The article is written almost entirely from a defensive, sympathetic view of Turcotte justifying why he murdered his children. Suggest a rewrite with an unbiased approach that tells the factual, and not some biased contextual history of what happened. There is enough material available in both French and English online media to do so, especially since the recent December 6, 2015 upholding of the double conviction of second-degree murder (see example)

Also, regarding the article title, why the Guy Turcotte "killings?" Is that not a term more reserved for massacres of larger dimensions? It seems distancing from the actual filial crime of him killing his own children, which is what distinguishes this crime and makes it Wikipedia-worthy. Why be so vague? Why not "murders," or "murder trial?" Or simple retitling it "Guy Turcotte" in the same way other notorious killer articles on Wikipedia are titled (i.e. Charles Manson).

This article's quality and relevance can be much improved.

Denstat (talk) 08:54, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

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In the arts.
The Canadian The Box used the topic for their song "L' affaire Dumoutier (Say To Me)" 2003:C0:DF1F:C200:71DA:13A2:8533:7A0F (talk) 21:32, 26 November 2023 (UTC)