Talk:Harry Zolnierczyk

Descent
Where does the information come, that Harry Zolnierczyk is Ukrainian descent? His name indicate Polish connotation (correct in Polish language Żołnierczyk). 83.9.113.45 (talk) 12:45, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Harry Zolnierczyk
To whom it may concern, I was hoping someone could help me out with Harry Zolnierczyk's Wikipedia page. There is a section about his personal life that outlines past charges he had against him. These charges were several years ago and are now outdated and irrelevant. I was hoping that the section could be removed from the page. I am admittedly someone personally close to Harry and am very disturbed that these are still listed on his Wikipedia page. Harry's past is something that he has taken care of and should not have to be haunted by this situation anymore. I don't see any disadvantage to taking down the personal life section of his page. I think it would be more than reasonable to move on from this and leave it in the past. I hope you understand. Please help me to remove the personal life section of Harry Zolnierczyk's Wikipedia page. Thank you very much.

Hockey4000 (talk) 01:59, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, User:Hockey4000 for stating your conflict of interest plainly and upfront. The incident is properly documented, but issue of undue weight is reasonable to discuss in a BLP. Given the legal system's outcome (that no permanent criminal record would be kept), I myself don't have any objection to the section's removal. I'm interested in what other editors have to say. BusterD (talk) 02:07, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Given the circumstances it would seem reasonable to remove it, I'd suggest. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:08, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Four separate editors reverted User:Hockey4000 when that editor tried to remove the section less than 72 hours ago. I'd like to hear from at least some of those editors before we remove it ourselves. BusterD (talk) 03:19, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Its no minor issue and certainly not "outdated" or irrelevent. Perhaps as a compromise we could weed it down to one sentence? What do you think User:Melcous? Haminoon (talk) 05:28, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the discussion - the deleting of it by someone close to him without discussion obviously raised a few concerns. I'm happy to be corrected on this, but my understanding of "no permanent criminal record" is that it is not the same as a sealed court record for example. The charge, finding and sentence remain a matter of public record, and significantly from a WP perspective remain in reliable sources. I don't think it is minor or outdated. However, I would agree with User:Haminoon that it could be edited down to a sentence or two and agree with User:BusterD that undue weight is an issue at the moment as the level of detail currently included is probably unnecessary. Melcous (talk) 11:01, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Being that it is well documented and factual and is definitely a large part of his notability it does need to remain in some form. Personally I like the detail being there as it gives some context to the situation that a single sentence lacks. -DJSasso (talk) 18:41, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for reading my request and starting a discussion on this topic. I don't think that there is any advantage to having the sentence or section still on the page though. Again, being personally close to the situation, I would be so grateful if it was just eliminated. Because he is left with no criminal record, there is no requirement to write this on his Wikipedia page. I really hope you understand and can help me out. Thank you very much. Hockey4000 (talk) 18:46, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, the information is sourced, but we should be careful about what we include. Personally, I like to follow the rules of spent convictions; After however many years, convictions can be removed from criminal records (in the UK at least). Nothing is added by having old convictions left, especially if they are not key to notability, or minor and old. Just my 2 cents, but we should always consider the subjects while writing articles. -- Mdann 52   talk to me!  19:16, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It is well documented and a big part of his notability, so there is absolutely no reason for its omission. I believe the full paragraph is better since it gives context and explains the result of the RCMP investigation.  Whether there is a criminal record or not has no bearing on whether it belongs here or not.18abruce (talk) 19:24, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * "Defence counsel Richard Fowler made no attempt to diminish the magnitude of the crime, but maintained that "youthful, first-time offenders are not typically placed in the position of being set up as examples."

Fowler conceded that a period of probation was necessary, but that a discharge was warranted, especially in light of the personal and social consequences he has faced already, including being held up as a child pornographer (one of the original charges) by the U.S. media.

"He now understands, almost as well as the young lady, what an invasion of privacy is like," Fowler said. "Especially the shame of having his name distributed on the Internet as a child pornographer -- forever. He understands what it feels like to be violated, and he is truly sorry for that.""

If he understood back then he would be labelled a child pornographer forever, he understands it still. Statement should remain on his page. --&#91;&#91;User talk: Slave28&#124;♪ℓ☮⚔☭ⅩⅩⅧ&#93;&#93; (talk) 06:25, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the help to remove or shorten the section, however, I think the one sentence is worse. If there is no way to remote the section completely, then please put the entire section back. Thank you. Hockey4000 (talk) 21:32, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I have put the original text back up there. Please reconsider removing the section all together. If that is not possible, please keep the full section as opposed to the sentence. Thank you. Hockey4000 (talk) 21:39, 13 November 2014 (UTC)


 * His defense attorney made the comment on record, the judge took that into consideration prior to sentencing, in my opinion, it is fair that he has to live with that tag for the rest of his life. Nothing for me to reconsider, The Canadian justice system gave him a huge opportunity by not putting him in prison, he just has to live with what he has done, we are not here to bury the facts.--&#91;&#91;User talk: Slave28&#124;♪ℓ☮⚔☭ⅩⅩⅧ&#93;&#93; (talk) 22:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * However at the same time, this incident doesn't seem to have been heavily covered by the media either. I also note that while charges were brought, he got a very minor punishment and this is no longer on his permanent record. I honestly don't see where, from a BLP point of view, this really merits an entire section on the article. Please don't take this to mean that I condone what he did, but while we're not here to bury facts we also have to use discretion in what we place in a Wikipedia article and this shouldn't be used as a journal to record every thing a person did, whether that thing is good or bad. This sounds terrible in a human sense, but I don't see where this one particular charge had any lasting importance on Zolnierczyk's career. I performed a search and didn't really find much, to be honest, and when I did a general search for Zolnierczyk's name I found one news hit for the child pornography charges in the first 10 pages. It's old news so I know that more recent stuff will come up first, but at the same time the scarcity of mentions of this doesn't really show proof that this was really all that notable of an incident. Again, I know that this sounds terribly cold and ruthless, but we're not here to punish Zolnierczyk and at some level we do have to worry about whether or not the section puts undue weight on the charges and as such, be a BLP violation. I honestly don't see where this merits more than a 1-2 sentence mention in the article at most. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   07:55, 14 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Notable enough of a story to have appeared in the book "The dark side of sports : exposing the sexual culture of collegiate and professional athletes". Let's look at it from a neutral point of view. 1)He was an adult at the time. 2)He knew what he was doing was wrong when he was watching the webcam feed. 3)He knew it was wrong when he chose to begin recording the webcam feed. 4)He knew it was wrong when he chose to share the video he made with others.  In Canada, ignorance of the law is no excuse, I know I live here, and as to the lack of punishment, it was clear that because the laws were relatively knew on the books this is why his punishment was as such.  We tend to look back on cases to see what is best suited.  Since there was no jurisprudence the judge set the bar low.  The bottom line is that his defense attorney opened his mouth to sway the judge, now he has to live with it.  The facts are documented and I do not see any reason for them to be removed.  Instead of focusing on taking down something that tarnishes Zolnierczyk's image maybe some editors should focus on adding what constructive things he has done in society since this incident, which I see none of on his page. --&#91;&#91;User talk: Slave28&#124;♪ℓ☮⚔☭ⅩⅩⅧ&#93;&#93; (talk) 18:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)


 * This discussion seems to have wound down, but I thought I'd add my two cents. In general, Wikipedia is ill equipped to make editorial decisions about what information "deserves" to be published. Most editors (including me) have little experience making such decisions; in addition, finding a consensus about, say, the moral seriousness of voyeurism charges is out of our scope for good reason.
 * When we must make difficult decisions like this, we usually defers to reliable sources: if they treat a person as notable, so do we. If they decline to publish the name of a victim, so (I expect) do we. I believe a similar policy should apply in this case. In this case, at least two media outlets wrote about the crime (CBC News and the Alberni Valley Times, which wrote at least 8 articles), even though Zolnierczyk was only a college hockey player at the time, and it has since been mentioned in a book. This is not a huge amount of attention, but it's enough that I would want a very compelling reason before removing it.
 * I have edited the section down to three sentences, which I think is due weight. (The undue weight policy, by the way, deals mostly with presenting minority opinions in proper context, a consideration which isn't relevant here.)—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 21:51, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I like the truncation. It looks well-cited and shows the case's outcome. BusterD (talk) 01:45, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This seems reasonable to me. Not a matter of due weight in the technical sense of that policy, but a matter of proportion. Metamagician3000 (talk) 04:08, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree this looks good, well cited and neutrally explained. Thanks for your work. Melcous (talk) 08:09, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

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I'd like to revisit this issue of the subject's early misdeeds
I've duly reported the recent socking; a set of accounts and ips deleted the well-cited paragraph concerning the subject's legal matters. Other registered accounts reverted these changes; I was one of those. But after reading a comment from the admin who was checking out the socking, I believe it reasonable to revisit whether the mistakes this subject made over twenty years ago should appear in a current encyclopedia article about him. I was part of the discussion in the 2014 thread on this talk page and at the time I favored inclusion but truncation, which was the consensus and was done by another editor.

I suggest we delete the paragraph per undue weight on a BLP. The subject is not known as an offender; the behavior doesn't seem to have been repeated. It was a mistake made in college. Comments? BusterD (talk) 07:24, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * There's been no discussion here after my suggestion. I'm going to remove this information per my assertion above. I won't edit war with those who wish to reinsert this cited material. Until that time, it's out. BusterD (talk) 21:47, 14 January 2020 (UTC)