Talk:Franklin child prostitution ring allegations

My removal of content

I looked at the newspaper articles used as references in detail and could not see some of the important facts in the sections of the article where the material was used. So, I removed whole or large portions of the entire section because the context was not correct otherwise. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Good to be bold...I'm inclined to think that the article needs to be deleted and rewritten...then the history is buried except to admins and the major issues regarding BLP might be easier to contain.--MONGO 23:49, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I'm very concerned that existing material may mis-summarize the cited sources. Starting over from scratch, based purely on reliable sources, is the best strategy for this article.   Will Beback  talk  02:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The article as previously written accurately summarized material available from a variety of sources, including contemporaneous articles published by the newspaper of record for the State of Nebraska, the Omaha World Herald. Even very minor mis-summarizations were eliminated long ago; the only dispute had to do with how much weight to give various parts of the story.

While the article was being developed, there was general consensus that the Omaha World Herald articles, posted online for educational purposes, constituted reliable sourcing. Now that the Omaha World Herald articles have been effectively excluded, of course the facts contained in those articles lack sourcing.

Given the roadblocks that have been erected, I suspect the article is headed for total extinction. I don't know anyone willing to pay for, and post excerpts of, all the relevant Omaha World Herald articles.

And Mongo wants the history buried too?! So even if one were to dig up the articles, pay for them, and cite them according to the "New Rules," untold hours of work would have been lost.

Nice job guys. Apostle12 (talk) 06:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The rules haven't changed significantly, just the enforcement of them. Stubbing is a standard remedy for articles with significant problems, especially those concerning living people.

It's quite possible that some of the citations were scrambled during Jehochman's stubbing, but before then there were only 25 citations for the whole article, most of them either The New York Times or the Omaha World - Herald. It wouldn't be that hard to recreate the article from those 15 articles.   Will Beback  talk  06:49, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I suppose. However, this article constitutes a major sinkhole of time and energy, with no end in sight. The obstructionism I have observed here precludes customary assumptions of good faith. Apostle12 (talk) 07:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Like a building, an article built on a bad foundation keeps having problems. The foundation for an article should be solid, reliable sources. If everyone agrees on those then there's less to disagree about later.   Will Beback  talk  08:37, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but that's not what happened here, as I am sure you know. This was a hit job, plain and simple. Apostle12 (talk) 19:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

"A hit job"? Let's not be overdramatic. No one was hurt by the deletion of this article, and some harm to living people is potentially avoided.   Will Beback  talk  01:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Deletion as enforcement of BLP policy

As enforcement of the BLP policy, I deleted the article to remove the revision history from view. A spot check of revisions showed that there were too many unsourced negative facts to clean up using a more conservative method. For example, the first 5 references did not support many of facts claimed in the text including allegations of which institutions and people were investigated and accurate details about the investigation. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:21, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Can the most recent revisions be restored and the attribution be placed somewhere please? NW (Talk) 17:03, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we should restart it as a stub.   Will Beback  talk  01:36, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Attribution is located here and linked to in the revision history. NW (Talk) 02:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Errors in stub

To the best of my knowledge only one purported victim was convicted of perjury. The source says "two." There was a Douglas County grand jury; what was the second grand jury?Apostle12 (talk) 05:09, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Good catch on indicted; I missed the "convicted on unrelated charges" part. Do you have a source for convicted on perjury charges? The sources are from 1990, so they still say indicted.

The second NYT source mentions a federal grand jury, which I assume is separate from the county grand jury. NW (Talk) 06:10, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Paul Bonacci and Alisha Owen were indicted for perjury, however only Owen was convicted. Bonacci was declared incompetent to stand trial.

The Omaha World Herald is the newspaper of record for the state of Nebraska, and they followed the Franklin case quite closely, publishing some 700 related articles during the period in question. The previous Wikipedia article (now deleted) was sourced using a number of complete Omaha World Herald articles posted online for educational purposes. The accuracy of the online postings has been verified. Although the consensus among previous editors was that this form of sourcing was allowable, it has recently been disallowed.

It is not possible to link directly to the Omaha World Herald articles, though individual Wikipedia editors have purchased copies. To purchase a substantial number of the relevant articles would be quite expensive. Administrator Will Beback has advocated that we post the Omaha World Herald articles (redacted sufficiently to avoid copyright conflicts) here at Wikipedia so that multiple editors might reference them in writing the article.

One editor is a current resident of Omaha, and even he cannot access the Omaha World Herald archives free of charge. To date I am not familiar with any library that maintains a remote archive, although next week I plan to visit the University of California at Berkeley to see what might be available through their system. Apostle12 (talk) 07:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

A Federal Grand Jury was called after the original Douglas County Grand Jury findings were overturned (and sealed) for "procedural irregularities." It was the Federal Jury that ruled that the abuse had occurred but that there was insufficient evidence to indict the accused, the Federal Jury also indicted Owen on eight counts of perjury (but not Bonacci) which were largely related to claims against Omaha Chief of Police Wadham but this Grand Jury, unlike the county one, made no claims regarding a hoax. Another error in the stub is the dates and it should read between 1985 and 1991. The 1985 Nebraska Foster Care Board made the original claims and the failure of law enforcment to act on those claims was the reason the Franklin Committee was set up (it was the main part of their brief). The Franklin Committee issued a subpoena to Attorney General Robert Spire to provide records proving that the 1985 claims had been investigated as he had claimed but he refused. Spire’s investigator, Thomas Vlahoulis was then issued a subpoena and he testified that none of the original claims had been investigated by the Attorney Generals department but they had been turned over to the Omaha P.D. whose Chief of police was one of those accused. It was this claimed "cover-up" that led to the first Grand jury which took testimony from two of the victims named in the 1985 investigation and another four of the 60 victims that Carodori had found who were willing to testify. Wayne (talk) 06:36, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

You're going to have to pull up proper sources for most of that (i.e., not from sites like FranklinCase.org). As far as the 1985 stuff goes; I'm just following what the Jenkins book said. Feel free to change it to "late 1980s" if you want. NW (Talk) 06:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Some of it is in the OWH articles, ie: the Franklin Committee brief and the original investigation (the Douglas Grand Jury did request that one of the accused be charged on the 1985 claims), unfortunately some is from primary sources ie: the Franklin Committee. Wayne (talk) 06:53, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Watching the article get rewritten may prove interesting.--MONGO 08:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLP

Please remember that the biographies of living persons policy is paramount here. In particular, note the following sentence from it: Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.

I have reverted this edit and semi-protected the article indefinitely. I am also considering revision-deleting the edit, but I would appreciate comments on that. NW (Talk) 03:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

There was nothing in that edit that warrants a revision-deletion. It was just poorly written and uncited. I would remind you that reporting what courts and legally constituted investigating committees say is protected by law from defamation (ie:BLP). Wayne (talk) 03:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

You really need to reread all of WP:BLP again. Material doesn't have to be defamatory or libelous to violate it. NW (Talk) 04:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm fully aware of BLP policy. None of the deleted original article would have been in violation if correctly sourced. Sourcing is the only problem that needs addressing. Wayne (talk) 12:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Wayne, it is exactly because of situations like this one, where it complicated and impossible for the average person to know if something is true or not that, that we have the BLP policy where unsourced negative claims are eligible for rev/del and suppression. Without sources we have no way of knowing if the information is factually accurate or not. The editors of this article engaged in subpar editing for a long time. We are now enforcing policy as it should have been done all along. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 13:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

We did know that the sources were accurate because MONGO checked several of the originals against them, yet despite no evidence of BLP violation the article was deleted rather than simply reverted. Wayne (talk) 15:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Wayne, I personally evaluated the (old) article references against the content in the (old) article, and I can say with certainly that content of the first paragraphs of the (old) article was not supported by the cited references. I don't have my notes with me, but if memory serves me correctly, I compared the material from the first five references cited with the text in the article. I found many examples of facts in the text that was not found in the references. In one instance that I remember, the Wikipedia article text was being supported by a reference that was conveying the opposite information. Based on the vast number of problems that I saw I deleted the article because it was impossible to remove the material any other way to enforce BLP policy. Because I have oversight permission, I regularly review articles for suppression and have a good understanding of the criteria used. In any case, I referred the this edit to the oversight mailing list for review as is customary in complicated cases such as this one. So, it will be reviewed by other people, too. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:11, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I realise there were a lot of problems but that was mainly a result of Phoenix and Winslows editing which added OR, changed wording and often moved text without moving the refs with them. The article was relatively stable until he took an interest. When he couldn't find a ref he even altered other WP articles to support his edits here. Instead of being reverted to a stable version it was deleted which was a better result than P&W could have wished for. It's my own fault I guess, I spent way to much time trying to work with him when I should have reported him. Wayne (talk) 23:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The article was stable until Phoenix challenged your BLP violations...in order to protect the website, nonpartisan admins had to step in and delete it...and then stub it. I think the article title is defamatory still...bear in mind that the deletion included your edits to this article, and it was only deleted because your edits violated policies. Frankly why you haven't been sanctioned in this affair is a testiment to the tolerance and patience of the non partisan admins that took control of this mess.MONGO 16:20, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Phoenix and Winslow first edited the article by removing material sourced from the NYT. It was only then that I became involved for the first time. Everything I added was not only sourced but also supported by the primary sources they reported on. If you have any evidence that my edits violated any policies please feel free to present it. As for the title, I can't understand why you want to minimise the significance of the allegations which are at the core of the entire affair as doing so only serves to protect the sex offenders and pedophiles that were recognised as such by the courts. You seem to be overlooking that neither the original allegations nor the original accusers were discredited by the Grand Jury. Only the additional witnesses found by the Franklin Committee investigation were accused of perjury and even then the Jury admitted they had been abused but had misidentified their abusers. In fact, the Grand Jury even requested that one of the accused be charged with pedophilia based on the evidence given by the accusers. He was in fact later charged and convicted. Wayne (talk) 03:37, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Seeing the article edit for the protection on my watchlist, I looked at the article history and rev/del the edit prior to seeing this discussion. I also sent an email to oversight asking for suppression. All material on Wikipedia that is negative needs to be sourced. Negative material about living people needs to be removed immediately if unsourced. If the material alludes to crimes then it is eligible for suppression as well as rev/del. The content of the edit is pushing the theory that crimes occurred without giving a reliable source to back it up, so imo it should be suppressed. We'll see if the oversight team agrees. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 13:28, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Hum...anyone track that IP...checkuser may prove informative but I can't see what was added since its now invisible. As I mentioned before, some of the problem with sourcing this article is so much appeared in the Omaha World Herald and but token cherry picked articles are available at private websites, so unless someone wants to spend the bucks and obtain all the clippings, its going to be hard to write a NPOV article. Very sensitive issues are involved here...anyone promoting fringe and possibly libellous material should tread lightly.MONGO 14:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

We shouldn't add one sentence to this article which isn't properly sourced.   Will Beback  talk  23:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more, Will. Honestly, I was really starting to despair that there would ever be any action at all by an administrator to address this problem. I actually turned my back on the entire Wikipedia project for about a month, because it appeared that the fringe theorists were taking ownership of whatever article they chose. I would like to thank you, and FloNight, and all others who stepped in here, for finally taking the necessary action.

The fact that sanctions of some sort have not been applied to Apostle12 and Wayne is a little worrisome. Clearly their actions, for at least the first five months of 2011, were over the line. They put the Wikipedia project at risk for legal action, by any surviving targets of this smear campaign. They eroded the credibility of Wikipedia as an accurate and impartial encyclopedia, built on a foundation of reliable sources.

This was serious. And the fact that absolutely nothing was being done about it for many months troubled me deeply. I hope we can proceed in the future with an understanding that this must never happen again. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 16:03, 27 June 2011 (UTC)