Talk:Kincora Boys' Home

Eastern Health and Social Services Board
In response, the Eastern Health and Social Services Board decided to institute a policy of not employing homosexuals in any caring roles.

Can we get any citations for this ? How long did this "policy" remain in place ? Is it still in place ? How were "homosexuals" identified ? What happened to "homosexuals" (actual or suspected) who were already in such roles ? What of (actual or suspected) Bisexuals, Transvestite or Transgendered employees ? and finally was this policy not regarded as controversial ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.103.77 (talk) 11:06, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Regarded not as controversial but overzealous. The Department of Health overturned the policy. No statistics on dismissals but there were some. It created a chill factor even if scrapped.

Lack of sourcing - delete?
The article has been essentially unsourced for a long time, and contains negative material about living people. This is a problematic violation of our WP:BLP article. Is there any reason this should not be sent to AFD and deleted? In other words, is anyone going to write a sourced article really soon? GRBerry 05:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"McGrath's HOMOSEXUALITY"?
Mr. McGrath did not self-identify as gay, and never had a same-sex relationship with an adult. Also, equating "homosexuality" with sexual molestation of children of the same-sex is the repetition of an inaccurate and now-discredited statement. The overwhelming majority of pederasts(men who molest boys)identify as heterosexual in their sexual feelings towards adults. Consequently, I removed the biased and inaccurate reference to "homosexuality" in the main article. Ken Burch (talk) 09:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)Ken Burch 09:40, 21 May 2009

To say McGrath did not have same sex relationships with adults is misleading, there is plenty of evidence he did indeed have adult same sex relationships. Have a look at Paul Foot's book Who Framed Colin Wallace. McGraths homosexuality was relevant because at the time of the offences against boys homosexuality was still illegal in Northern Ireland. It was directly relevant because people at the time who knew of McGraths homosexuality - and those people included Ian Paisley - also knew of the allegations that boys had been making at the home for years. This should have been enough to trigger an investigation by the authorities after the complaints. It was the lack of proper investigations of these allegations that led many to believe there was a cover-up. This is not a conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia in general. The overwhelming number of paedophiles may be heterosexual men but William McGrath was most certainly an example of a homosexual paedophile/pederast.

BFKate (talk) 11:32, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

BFKate, while I agree with your point the language of the article is extremely misleading. Can we rewrite to express explicitly what you have stated here? 76.111.244.85 (talk) 14:08, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiProjects of interest reinstated
I reinstated the WikiProject banners recently removed by User:SnowFire-Alt, who commented that they had "remove unrelated wikiprojects - this was a crime, but "organized crime"? Also, doesn't appear to really be closely tied to Ireland, was in N. Ireland." Others do not see it that way, and the removed banners existed prior to my edits. The LEAD sentence says the home was the scene of "serious organised child sexual abuse". Other editors consider this to be "organised crime" in a broad sense, and I concur. There is no single definition of what constitutes organised crime and this might vary by jurisdiction and culture due to different legal systems. Also, Northern Ireland is geographically on the island of Ireland, but is politically under British rule. Again this article is considered by others to be "of interest" to both of those WikiProjects. WikiProject scope of interest is the inclusion criteria, not relevance. Relevance of an article to a WikiProject is indicated by the "importance" attribute. The purpose of a WikiProject is to improve an article's quality, or "class" attribute, which means multiple WikiProjects may consider the same articles to be of interest. However, this is not mutually exclusive. User:SnowFire-Alt and others, if you consider the existing banners are "not relevant" pleas discuss why you think this article now falls outside the scope of the WikiProjects concerned. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 02:52, 4 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm familiar that Northern Ireland is on the island of Ireland but under British rule, yes. Do you believe that every single Northern Irish topic should be covered by both Wikiproject Northern Ireland and Wikiproject Ireland? That seems like it's just dulling the focus to me - sure, include events directly of interest to both in both projects, but if there's only a strong relevance to Northern Ireland, just keep it in WP Northern Ireland.
 * The word "organised" in Organised Crime doesn't mean "any crime in which there was some sort of organization." That would be essentially all crimes.  It means specifically Organized crime: "highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit."  It's talking about gangs and syndicates and smugglers and the like, not institutions that cover-up malfeasance.  This incident had nothing to do with organised crime.
 * I'm familiar that multiple projects can fall under the scope of a single article, as should be obvious by the fact I didn't remove all but one. I'm saying that this article isn't closely linked to the Wikiprojects I removed, for the reasons I stated.  The "importance" parameter is not the same thing; I'm not arguing the importance should be demoted, in the same way that if someone added WikiProject Sexology and sexuality because sex was involved, I would remove the Wikiproject as insufficiently related rather than downgrade the importance rating.  SnowFire (talk) 03:04, 4 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I assessed this article as being of interest to WikiProject Crime. Others had already added banners for Ireland and Organized crime, already. So I could see how this article falls within the scope of both of those WikiProjects, based on the way their scope sections are drafted. In my opinion, it is not the definition of Organized crime that is relevant here, but the scope of the Organized crime WikiProject, which is broader, and includes related articles where the degree of organization is less clear-cut and less centralized, but still a criminal organization. Similarly, WikiProject Ireland "is ... dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the island of Ireland", so its scope includes Northern Ireland related articles. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 03:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, you are saying then that every single article in WikiProject Northern Ireland should also be in Wikiproject Ireland, then. I do not think that is how articles are currently organised and think that would be a very bad idea (again, topics should not be added into every vaguely related Wikiproject).  Are you really set on this opinion?  I think we should discuss this at a Wikiproject talk page and see if there's any consensus for such a sweeping declaration.  (And really this suggests that WP Northern Ireland should probably just be a task force of WikiProject Ireland if that was really true...  which would be sure to enrage Northern Irish nationalists.)
 * The scope of the Organized Crime Wikiproject is absolutely not broader; you can't just claim that without any evidence. I read WP:ORGANIZEDCRIME to make sure before posting my above comment.  It very directly says "This WikiProject aims to maintain and improve organized crime-related articles" and that it is about "* Organized crime, mafia, syndicates, Gangs and street gangs, Criminal societies and similar organizations".  This was absolutely not a criminal society or a gang or a mafia.  This was an orphanage essentially that happened to also be doing criminal activites and covering it up.  It is not the same thing.  When a corporation is cooking their books (Enron scandal), or a college is covering up sex abuse (Penn State child sex abuse scandal), these are not criminal organizations that are out to commit crimes, but rather normal corporations / universities that have misconduct going on within them.  But it's not their purpose.  This is definitional and not controversial.  Unless there's something this article isn't covering - if there was ties to some sort of larger criminal organisation here rather than just a very evil orphanage / boys' home - this isn't organised crime, and the Wikiproject should be re-removed. SnowFire (talk) 03:51, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
 * There are allegations in this article that a "paedophile ring" existed and that this was covered up. Having these allegation being documented in the article puts it into the "Criminal societies and similar organizations" criteria and others before me saw fit to include this article into the Organized Crime Wikiproject. And if someone saw fit to add the WikiProject Sexology and sexuality, I would consider that relevant, too. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 05:57, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It really isn't relevant, though. The Sexuality Wikiproject should be for articles whose core topic is sexuality, not every single criminal who committed a sexual offense.  That just makes it harder to find the actually relevant articles that Wikiproject looks at.
 * Since you didn't respond - do you stand by the idea that every single Northern Irish topic should be discussed in both Wikiprojects, since Northern Ireland is in Ireland?
 * I've boldly re-removed Organized Crime (and British Crime, which is a defunct project). I continue to see no evidence of any mafia-like conspiracy or involvement going on here.  I will happily put it back myself if such a connection is shown in the article.  SnowFire (talk) 06:20, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The parentage of WikiProject Northern Ireland is that of WikiProject Ireland. To me that means the people who have established WikiProject Northern Ireland and WikiProject Ireland do consider all articles that are included in WikiProject Northern Ireland should also be candidates for inclusion in WikiProject Ireland. However, that doesn't necessarily mean every single Northern Irish topic should be in both, or even either of these, WikiProjects. There are some Irish related article, particularly political and cultural topics that, geographically, are outside of Ireland and are better suited to other WikiProjects. If you still disagree with my opinion, I think you should seek further guidance from the Ireland and Northern Ireland WikiProjects as to how their project pages are best interpreted. This article has been assigned to both the Ireland and Northern Ireland WikiProjects since March 2008 and you are the first user to challenge the existing consensus.
 * This article already had Organized Crime WikiProject and British crime WikiProject banners on the talk page long before I added the WikiProject Crime banner. I also notice that the British crime WikiProject has become defunct only in the past few days. I see at your instigation. The problem with making WikiProject British crime defunct is that some 2,544 articles that were part of that WikiProject are no longer categorized as WikiProject British crime, nor are they categorized under WikiProject Crime. I, for one, was unaware that WikiProject British crime was going to be made defunct. There is no discussion on the talk page about this project being made defunct, only a proposal for merger with WikiProject Crime. While I agree with a merger, I think making the WikiProject British crime defunct before migrating every British Crime article to WikiProject Crime is premature. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 09:39, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

(Sorry, thought I replied earlier, but it must have been eaten.) Cameron Dewe, it's clear we've gotten off on a bad start here, but you've clearly been around Wikipedia for awhile. Surely, surely you've run into times where you find an article, and it's had something hilariously wrong in the content for some time. I just recently found an article that had been marked as "unreferenced" for over 10 years, and added a reference to it and expanded it. Other articles had just plainly incorrect information after I checked the actual books / sources. The point is, you have to run into this yourself - I'm sure you have stories of finding crazy or weird article content that was just left broken for years. Just as there can be problems in article content that remain unfixed, so can there be problems in internal Wikipedia organization. It's not a big problem - people make good faith efforts and sometimes there's a guess or misinterpretation for what the relevant Wikiprojects are. Sometimes important Wikiprojects are missing for a decade and get added. Sometimes there's the reverse, where an only obliquely relevant Wikiproject is added. It's not a big deal, but there is such a thing as good-faith cleanup to try to trim articles to just the relevant Wikiprojects. It should be just as easy to add or to remove a stray Wikiproject. Anyway, the point is, I really wouldn't rest that much authority on "it's right because nobody's spoken up before." Sometimes mistakes just persist for a long time, whether in prose or in internal Wikipedia organization.

I might bring up the Northern Ireland / Ireland issue later after doing some more research to see if I'm the crazy one or what. If I do decide to post it, I'll be sure to ping you. For now, I've left this as including both Wikiprojects. (Maybe this did involve stuff across the border anyway, which would assuage my personal issue anyway.) SnowFire (talk) 06:21, 5 September 2022 (UTC)