Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Murder of Adrianne Reynolds


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Since the deletion review, the discussion has trended very strongly towards a consensus to keep. That is where the consensus now lies, both sides of the debate having generally raised valid arguments. Mkativerata (talk) 19:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Murder of Adrianne Reynolds

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This strikes me as a case of "single event"--an article on a topic that does not rise to the proper level of notability since there appears to be no larger impact. Drmies (talk) 20:28, 23 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. I see a lack of lasting effects. —  Kudu ~I/O~ 20:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * As per my comment at Deletion review/Log/2011 September 9, the closing admin should note that this "Delete !vote has not cited a relevant policy" and that " 'no lasting effects' is not a valid argument for deletion." Unscintillating (talk) 14:16, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 20:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC)


 * keep this case is the subject of a new book (this month) by M. William Phelps. It seems to me that if phelps, a fairly well-known and respected true crime author, found enough material to write a book about the case 5 years after the fact, then there's a good chance that (a) the case is notable and (b) that there are much higher quality secondary sources available than the article in its current state suggests that there are, e.g. the book itself and the source material that the book is based on.  According to the press release about the book, phelps uses a lot of interview material, which would be exclusive and therefore not available to web searches.  i therefore think it's worth keeping this article around until someone can integrate material from this new book into it. &mdash; Alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 21:02, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * comment there is also some, albeit not deep, mention of this case in Inside the Mind of a Teen Killer By Phil Chalmers.  it seems to me that this subject is in fact being discussed and is developing. &mdash; Alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 21:10, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Why would the announcement of the publication of one book help out here? If a subject is being discussed, maybe we should wait until that discussion is over and we know whether something had an effect or not. Drmies (talk) 01:37, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete Sad case, but it's local news regurgitated multiple times by cable true crime shows and Dateline to give it artificial notability it need not have and treat this tragedy as mere entertaining time-slot filler. No lasting effects in other forums of law or forensics.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 05:17, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment "Artificial" notability? Is there such a thing? The question is whether the event is notable, not whether it should be. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 22:00, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * If not for this attention lavished upon it by these cable crime shows it would just be a regular case confined solely to the Quad Cities and the Illinois AP newswire in brief, as it sounds like this ended up (I don't remember hearing anything about this at the time on Chicago news radio stations, for instance). However you get the cable crime shows in who need content and they make it seem like a bigger case than it is in reality.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 04:53, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * comment it seems to me that, if true, the fact that it wasn't covered much at the time it happened, but is now being covered, is actually an argument in favor of notability rather than against. we're looking for judgements of notability over time, rather than all at once, and that seems to plausibly be what we have here. &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 05:00, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly, you can't disqualify those TV shows as evidence of notability just because you find them distasteful. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 08:14, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * True, but we can disqualify them for being unreliable sources (generally tv programs are not RS) not to mention ignore them as per WP:SENSATION--Cerejota (talk) 14:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not agree that we can discount numerous TV crime shows as reliable sources to support notability of a crime. Reliable Sources Noticeboard does not exclude Dateline as a reliable source:. Books about crimes are not excluded as reliable sources, nor are TV news shows. Edison (talk) 19:18, 16 September 2011 (UTC)


 * It would be a mistake to confuse a shocking news story with WP:SENSATION. WP:SENSATION is primarily concerned with news sources with a bias away from careful fact checking.  This could indeed be a problem in a shocking story like this, but after reading the Quad-City Times article, written five years after the initial event, I see no sensational facts in our article that are not reliably sourced.  I do see a reliably sourced statement in the newspaper article that this story is "shocking".  In summary, I see no evidence that WP:SENSATION applies.  Unscintillating (talk) 13:12, 17 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete: I agree that this seems to be coverage of a single event. Topher385 (talk) 10:17, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep - the delete !voters here are wrong its not a single event, with the trials and judgement there it has achieved continued coverage. also local doesnt mean non-notable.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:19, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Also coverage in notable television crime series. not all murders gets coverage on these kind of shows they need to be notable,. Also the case will appear on another notable tv-show in september 2011, making me even more confident that the article should be kept and that also the first delete !voter was wrong when stating the reason no lasting effect as a reason as it has had coverage and thereby effects.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:20, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment That's the problem; just because it appears on a television series doesn't give it automatic notability. It is a tragedy but the reputation of Deadly Women and Snapped both aren't very good at all; all they do is take a case and heighten the details to an absurd level which makes it seem more grisly than it is in reality. It's also unlikely that anyone beyond law enforcement, the usual cadre of "experts" that make the crime TV circuit and opportunistic persons related to the case appeared on these series because families of the suspects and victims generally do not want to appear on television to talk about this event all over again.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 00:49, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, this crime has reached the notability standard needed for inclusion in the Wikipedia via the episodes of different crime series too. The crime is also the subject of a book written by M. William Phelps. --BabbaQ (talk) 17:34, 30 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, causa sui (talk) 00:15, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * weak Keep; I abridged it a little. the notability is the subsequent publications about it.  DGG ( talk ) 02:33, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep This case has been featured in People, one the country's biggest magazines, as shown in the references list. It's a keep for me. 11coolguy12 (talk) 11:07, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Mention in one source is enough for you? Closing admin should disregard this !vote as against policy - even WP:GNG requires significant coverage in multiple reliable sources.--Cerejota (talk) 12:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete Notability (events) states that "Routine kinds of news events – whether or not tragic or widely reported at the time – are usually not notable unless something further gives them additional enduring significance." After reading the aftermath section, there are no lasting significance of the murder. The article should also be deleted per WP:EFFECT. Sp33dyphil  "Ad astra" 11:47, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * unfortunate Keep - the fact that this story has been sensationalized by the tabloid press makes it all the more important to have a "just the facts" reference on Wikipedia. There is significant national coverage over an extended time, meeting all definitions of notability. Bella the Ball (talk) 14:11, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:SENSATION. Quite the contrary, precisely because all the info is yellowish, we shouldn't give in to the tabloids. Just like we delete gossip from BLPs without mercy, we deny the tabloids influencing wikipedia. We are not a fact-checking media watchdog, we are an encyclopedia.--Cerejota (talk) 12:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - Notability is established through the given sources. Whether they are personally liked or not, they do qualify for wikipedia. Sergecross73   msg me   18:19, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep This individual murder has achieved a level of revulsion sufficient to spawn that final arbiter of cultural significance, a TV show about it. Sometimes, even today, even in the USA, individual murders still have the power to do that. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete: I declined this article (and a bunch more from this editor) at AfC five times. Nothing against the creator, nominator, or the Wikipedian who approved the article, but I was counting down until this article went up for deletion. It's totally non-notable, is a news event, isn't properly sourced, isn't encyclopedic, I could go on for hours. --Nathan2055talk-review 02:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong delete I am in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, in particular those who fail WP:NEVENTS and disregard WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, such as this one.--Cerejota (talk) 12:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Meets WP:PERSISTENCE, WP:DIVERSE, WP:N/CA and WP:CRIME. In the case of events, persistence and diversity in sources is key. Because we're dealing with convicted and incarcerated living people, we have a special responsibility to honor the intent of WP:BLP. Per CRIME, we don't have articles on the perpetrators or the victim, but as that section suggests, on the event. As an event, this meets lots of EVENT criteria. We've got multiple linked news sources, (uncited) claim of national headlines, three news feature documentaries, and at least one book length treatment. Per N/CA multiple diverse sources can confer notability on an event. BusterD (talk) 12:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't meet WP:PERSISTENCE, per WP:SENSATION we should ignore sensationalistic sources. Tho give an idea of the extreme level of puffery present in this article, one of the "sources" cited in the article as of now is to a Washington Redskins forum:[ http://www.extremeskins.com/showthread.php?90249-Illinois-teen-killed-and-dismembered-classmates-under-arrest]. The key here is that notability is not established simply by stating it does - WP:N/CA specifically mentions that the case needs to be "high-profile" (this isn't) and argues for quality of sourcing. While there has been sporadic coverage of the case, the fact that some of the sourcing is fetched from online forums unrelated to the topic, speaks of the little notability of this case. You also make claims in this argument that are not made in the article - I suspect the "news documentaries" are tabloid quality treatments (to be ignored as per WP:SENSATION) and the book (Too Young to Kill by M. William Phelps) is probably the reason why this article was created in the first place, years after the event, to promote the book. Not to mention the book itself is non-notable and not a reliable source in itself.So yeah, delete PRcruft, we do not exist to retcon notability for Pinnacle's marketing department. --Cerejota (talk) 13:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Whoa, if Pinnacle's paying the page creator to create this stuff, they're certainly not getting anybody's credit by it. It's all pretty much drek, and no professional writer would turn this in. For the record, during a cursory search of the creator's other contributions, Erika and Benjamin Sifrit comes up, with a line at the bottom referring to a 2009 M. William Phelps book. So perhaps there's some fire to the smoke User:Cerejota sees. That user has been working with the page creator longer than I, but to my eyes the creator is just a newbie with access to the entire season of Snapped. BusterD (talk) 13:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * A modus operandi I have identified is the the use of sacrificial accounts to create articles, and then the professional meatpuppets either directly keep, or expect a keep, and then move in "to improve the quality". I am seeing this pattern often in publishing, but also in tech - in particular the pesky Avaya case is amusing (methinks its a midsized purveyor of out-of-production Avaya/Lucent/Att products trying to catalogfy wikipedia). The repeated AfC requests howerver were indeed a faux pas I have not seen yet and are hilariously hardheaded.--Cerejota (talk) 14:20, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd appreciate some more explanation of what you're talking about here, and in the box you placed at the top of the page. User:RRRRRYYYYYAAAAANNNNN is indeed a serial WP:AFC submitter (I tried to wean him off it once – no response), but a lot of his submissions were perfectly fine and have been created. I also wouldn't consider it necessarily a "faux pas" to keep resubmitting at AfC, because that's how the process works: submit-decline-improve, submit-decline-improve, until it's made. And as far as I can tell he hasn't been blocked? joe&bull;roet&bull;c 15:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Submitting the same article 4 times in under 40 minutes is normal at AfC?--Cerejota (talk) 15:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well it's not uncommon, in my experience, and perfectly fine as long as the submitter is making an effort to address the reviewer's concerns. But this isn't "AfC review" – I'm still confused about the reference to a blocked user, and what you have to back up a possible COI on User:RRRRRYYYYYAAAAANNNNN's part? joe&bull;roet&bull;c 16:06, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The article was bought out of AfC by a now blocked user. The COI is not necessarily User:RRRRRYYYYYAAAAANNNNN's, although as noted, there is connection in the topics.--Cerejota (talk) 16:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep The sources are legit. It needs to be rewritten. --Ryan.germany (talk) 15:13, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   10:47, 16 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Relisting comment: This discussion was closed as "delete", but that closure was overturned and the discussion relisted per Deletion review/Log/2011 September 9.  Sandstein   10:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm going to make an explicit keep !vote because I didn't before, but I don't think there is much else to say and would rather have seen this closed as no consensus following the deletion review. User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah and User:11coolguy12 have mentioned sources that demonstrate lasting coverage per WP:PERSISTENCE, in addition to the significant coverage in the news cited in the article itself. The delete voters are either pretending these don't exist, or dismissing them because of a personal opinion that the subject is in bad taste (I agree; but that has nothing to do with notability). User:Cerejota's—let's put it politely and say "suspicions"—don't appear to have any weight, which is discussed at length in the deletion review. joe&bull;roet&bull;c 11:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I have commented on the article talk page on the COI issues.--Cerejota (talk) 19:28, 16 September 2011 (UTC)


 * keep Notable crime per significant, diverse and persistent coverage in reliable sources. Cited above are Dateline, People, and a book about the crime. The crime and the trial got national and worldwide coverage such as in South America a year after the crime. It is unreasonable to discount books about crimes, or TV shows which cover crime as failing to be reliable sources merely because of their subject matter. Commentors should AGF and refrain from accusing those with different views of having a conflict of interest. Edison (talk) 20:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Sometimes, there's just no consensus. I don't personally think this content is really suitable for Wikipedia, but deleting it is not the highest priority in the world, and enough good faith editors want to keep it that I recognise there's no chance of deletion. There's no evidence whatsoever of a conflict of interest and I think it would be best if that allegation were withdrawn.— S Marshall T/C 00:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep: I consider the coverage given sufficient to meet the GNG. The Dateline episode, as well as (to a lesser degree) the people article are especially indicative of notability.  I don't get the extreme bias against news-generating events, from the wp:GNG: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list.  Newspapers can be reliable sources (typically independent of the subject) that provide significant coverage of events. Buddy431 (talk) 04:35, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep satisfies WP:GNG, several of the delete arguments here fail WP:NTEMP i.e. the topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline in the past, it does not need to have ongoing coverage.Polyamorph (talk) 07:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep WP:OSTRICH also applies to shocking stories, we follow the media, we don't tell them that they shouldn't be covering such stories.  Polyamorph and Buddy431 also make good points.  Unscintillating (talk) 17:12, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.