Talk:Mumia Abu-Jamal

Reworded lede

I checked dozens of articles in the "American prisoners sentenced to death" category and none includes race in the lede, so I removed it from this one. This helps simplify the first sentence of the lede and removes (what I feel is) WP:UNDUE attention to his race. Rostz (talk) 03:58, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Racism was certainly a factor in the case, though you may not know it. Whether it was significant enough to put in the lede of Abu-Jamal's biography is debatable, but it is sufficiently important to mention in the article. Albert Sabo, the trial judge in his case, was a racist and reportedly said of Abu-Jamal, "I am going to help them fry the nigger". 96.26.213.146 (talk) 20:13, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok Mr. IP address, why don't you take a hike and stop pushing your agenda? You're too transparent to be taken seriously. Jersey John (talk) 07:48, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

First sentence

Hey watchlisters, I just stumbled upon this article and something that struck me was the first sentence in the lead. Usually our BLPs have the format "[person] is/was a CEO/activist/politician/etc who is/was know/n for [X]. The sentence in this articles strikes me as odd as it doesn't ascribe any sort of descriptive role to the subject. I don't know much about this case/person so I don't really have any suggestions, but perhaps someone more creative than me can come up with something. N^oformation ^Talk 08:05, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Primary sources

WP:BLPPRIMARY prohibits citations to court documents in articles about living persons. This article cites to many court documents, and many of those citations are not an "augmentation" of something cited to in a secondary source, but the only source for the material. An editor just reworded the "Arrest for murder and trial" section, based I assume on the editor's interpretation of a court transcript, which is the only cited source for the first paragraph. The second paragraph suffers from the same problem.

The article cannot be left this way. I've tagged the article to give editors a chance to cite to secondary sources. However, if none is forthcoming, I will start deleting material that is cited only to court documents. BLPPRIMARY is not a guideline; it is a policy, and it must be adhered to.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLPPRIMARY also says: "Where primary-source material has been discussed by a reliable secondary source, it may be acceptable to rely on it to augment the secondary source, subject to the restrictions of this policy, no original research, and the other sourcing policies."

There's a huge secondary literature here, and most of it cites court documents. It would certainly be a difficult job to read all the secondary sources to confirm that none of them cite a particular primary source. --Nbauman (talk) 20:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Death Penalty Dropped

Just a clean up question. Does this need to be in the article twice? The information is 3rd paragraph of the introduction at the top, and later again in a section titled the same, and they say the exact same thing. 96.31.177.52 (talk) 20:46, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

The introduction (or lead) is meant to summarise the whole article, and so everything in it will be repeated elsewhere in the article. Given that this is a new addition of material it's been added to both sections at once, and hasn't yet been through the organic process of drifting into a different wording through successive edits that much of the site's content does. Give it a few days and it'll not be so exact in its repetition, but the repetition of the actual facts are intentional and correct. GRAPPLE X 20:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Broken link to Amnesty International report, in References

· In the References, ref. #5 starting: '"A Life in the Balance: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal". Amnesty International. February 17, 2000'

- provides a broken web.archive.org link.

· This one works (as at 2011-12-09, NZDT): http://web.archive.org/web/20081201103126/http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000

· However, I cannot access References to fix it myself. davd (talk) 22:23, 8 December 2011 (UTC) David (davd)

Y Done Richard-of-Earth (talk) 06:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:BRD

Ok, so my "B" was "R"'d; now I'm here to "D". I changed the sentence "the events that led to his incarceration" to "he murdered Daniel Faulkner". This was reverted, with the summary "this won't do". May I ask, "Why?". His murdering Faulkner was what led to his incarceration. Why must we dance around the direct facts? Joefromrandb (talk) 18:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

This was added once before recently by an IP, and I reverted it. I tried to find a date to avoid the issue, but, unfortunately, the full text of the article is not online, so I have no idea when it happened. In the context of explaining his personal life, it seems wrong - and is certainly jarring - to use the phrase "he murdered Dankiel Faulkner", and it was a judgment call on my part to remove it. The current less aggressive text is perfectly accurate (assuming the source says what it's supposed to), so I don't see why we need to change it. It would really help to know the date as "shortly before" is ambiguous.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Assuming the IP that previously added it is no longer editing the article, perhaps WP:3O would be helpful. I realize you find it "jarring". I, however, find it unencyclopedic to to use what seems to amount to little more than euphasim. As it now seems to be only the two of us disagreeing about this, perhaps other editors will weigh in here. Joefromrandb (talk) 19:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to the efforts of User:DrKiernan, it looks like our problem has been solved.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Joefromrandb (talk) 20:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)