Talk:Karen McCarron

I Raise A Grave Objection
There were two articles about Katheine McCarron, however they have both been removed and now redirect to the article on Karen McCarron. This is unacceptable as the murdered child, not her cruel murderer, is the focus of the issue.
 * Sorry I failed to sign and date this earlier but I am the author of the above statement. Thank you. Ensrifraff 02:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * May I suggest renaming the article Katherine and Karen McCarron so that the article would be about both people? Q0 03:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: I Raise A Grave Objection
Wikipedia is an informational site, not an activist one. It is standard practice to categorize a murder case under the name of the perpetrator, and from both the legal and ethical standpoint, this makes sense. The perpetrator is after all the focus of the investigation and judicial process, and as such has less right to privacy than the victim.

Katherine does not have an entry of her own for the same reason that most of Ted Bundy's 30+ known victims do not. Their (and her) unfortunate entry into the public consciousness was entirely through the action of another individual, and the infamy belongs squarely to the perpetrator. While it is natural and understandable that you feel distaste towards someone who has admitted to killing her toddler, you are speaking as an activist rather than an editor when you state that "the murdered child...is the focus of the issue." In fact, Karen McCarron, not her daughter, is the issue. Individuals end up on Wikipedia for doing something out of the ordinary. Katherine was living like an ordinary autistic 3-year-old. Her mother, on the other hand, did something very out of the ordinary. This is why she's had her license suspended indefinitely, divorce papers served, faces decades in prison, and has a couple of strangers discussing (with a reference to Ted Bundy, to boot) her Wikipedia article.

FYI, there are also number of memorial sites dedicated to Katherine McCaron, and some of those are linked off of the article. wintersmith 02:40, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Wintersmith


 * We have an article about both Polly Klaas and Richard Allen Davis and we also have a category of murdered children. Having articles about people accused of crimes but not of victims does not appear to be the practice in every case. Q0 04:11, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Please note that I wrote "most of Tedy Bundy's 30+ victims", and did NOT state that murder victims do/should not have an article. Polly Klaas has her own article separate from her murderer's because she attained a significant degree of fame between the time she was kidnapped and the discovery of her remains, and posthumously inspired the creation of a well-known foundation. It may well be the case that Katie McCaron will become a standard bearer in some way, at which point she should be spun off to her own article. wintersmith 12:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe the correct approach is summarized by this essay on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%22Murder_of%22_articles - the article should be titled "Murder of Katie McCarron", because the event is notable (in Wikipedia-speak) but neither individual is. I'm not wiki-savvy enough to know how to fix this myself, but this seems like an obvious case a "murder of" title (which, in turn, would require re-writing the article to make it about the event and not include non-encyclopedic info about the murderer). Bluebeary (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

BLP sourcing tags recently added
Looking through the refs for this article show a lot of dead links, primary sources (such as court docs), and unreliable sources such as yahoo discussion forums. Because BLPs have strict sourcing requirements, this article needs some attention. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 18:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Self published sources are not reliable.
wp:SELFPUBLISH Don’t use self published sources such as Google groups or Yahoo Groups. JaneciaTaylor (talk) 19:04, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:SELFPUBLISH JaneciaTaylor (talk) 19:08, 17 November 2019 (UTC)