Talk:Death of Brian Sicknick

Collapsed on duty in lede

RSes universally report Sicknick collapsed while on duty, but this fact had been deleted from the lede. I've restored it and welcome improvements. Feoffer (talk) 19:14, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Actually the inserted words were "collapsed at the Capitol and". Am I missing something that says he did not collapse in the Capitol Police Office on D Street? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:54, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Sources: WSJ: "Around 10 p.m. that night, Mr. Sicknick collapsed at the Capitol" NPR"At approximately 10 p.m., Sicknick collapsed at the Capitol", NBC "He collapsed at the Capitol that night about 10 p.m" Feoffer (talk) 01:52, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the support (above). (a) Timeline complexities, both what.happened.when and when.wasit.known, should probably be avoided in the lead, except for the critical events that establish the importance of the subject.
(b) Some details lead to more details... I don't think 'when/where he collapsed' is critical for the lead, but the latest version says 'he collapsed at the Capitol AND died the next day...' Massively imprecise about time and location! I wouldn't presume that this is deliberately meant to mislead the Wiki reader, which it must do, but even if '10 p.m.' is specified, it remains misleading without further explanation that '10 p.m.' was not only 'after the riot' (known locally at the time) but also about 8 hours after being injured/sprayed (public knowledge after the Med Ex report).
(c) The news reporters out of D.C. might know where the Police Office is located in relation to the Capitol, but the world does not. To my knowledge, he collapsed at the police office, which presumably was not the site of the riot. If the RSes said he collapsed at the Capitol, that is an imprecise statement of location. Good enough for a news headline and story, maybe... Certainly misleading in Wiki.
(d) Timeline details should first get into the article before the lead, but some details are not readily available (because nobody asked?): How did he get back to the Police office? Did he go back during the riot or only afterwards (i.e. how long at the office before collapsing)? What was he doing? Where were the other officers, injured or not, meantime? When did he text message his brother, and where was he at the time - was he texting while on duty?
Horsense (talk) 07:38, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Competing rewrites, June 21-23

Wow. The article has been reduced, once again, to a story about the 'crime of spraying', the 'confusion about the cause (manner?) of death', the 'memorials', and some 'bio'. A lot of, uh, authorized, trivial facts. Some day, Wiki-editors will have reliable secondary sources about the whole Sicknick episode, and it will be clear what has endured and how to contextualize and summarize the important facts and details. For the time being, this article is based mostly on primary sources of mixed reliability, and editors differ about what's important.
I prefer to overload this article, to some degree, with direct quotations and with explicit statements about 'Who said what and when', even if there is some redundancy. I also think there is important political context that deserves to be added, as long as the content is relevant and specific quotes are used: it isn't OR to 'find' relevant sources, and it isn't SYNTH if there are no non-trivial generalizations or conclusions.
Our colleague-editor Neutrality seems determined to minimize, if not ignore, what I think is essential content. So we have a dispute, about the article as a whole, not just about some specific components or wordings. The removal of political material has also erased the explanations about why Sicknick received special honors, the only thing (as mentioned above by Terjen) of enduring historical significance. The article is now entirely trivial.
>> So, maybe questions need to be decided: How much prominence is to be given to (A) the belief that Sicknick was killed? (B) its role in impeachment? (C) the "fire extinguisher" error? (D) the spray assault (still alleged, not yet tried in court)?
>> I think A,B,C are high; D is low. Horsense (talk) 18:55, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• Your additions were, as described in my edit summaries, just bad. There was a lot of undue weight content and synthesis content. I understand that you may not like Pelosi or the American media, but that doesn't give you license to supersede encyclopedic policies in order to further that dislike. As far as your stated preference "to overload this article, to some degree, with direct quotations" and "some redundancy"—that is (1) bad writing and (2) especially bad for an encyclopedic.

At this point, the main importance of this article is how Sicknick's death has been used politically. See my comment above about how some politicians are still saying the Capitol mob killed Sicknick as part of an apparent propaganda narrative. The report on his cause of death has been widely reported, so this can no longer be called "confusion." My opinion is that this should be explored within the article. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 20:40, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

BTW, why is this included: "Other police officers were targeted by the pro-Trump mob with hurled fire extinguishers on January 6, in incidents unrelated to Sicknick.[38]" It has nothing to do with Sicknick or his death. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 12:53, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, that ended the discussion, didn't it. No one wants to deal with the propaganda issue? Sorry, it's what's really standing out at this point. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 12:15, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

>> Here's a response: Obviously, a later-reported fact about fire extingushers is more politically useful than the early unfounded assertions (which some people seem to want to forget ever happened). Also: the only apparent (secondary) source for the idea of 'confusion' also mentions 'controversy': Neutrality's phrase "atmosphere of confusion" is a blatant whitewash of the quote he erased. Horsense (talk) 13:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

• All my edits, including the liberal use of direct quotations, aim at adding information and sources that allow discussions. Neutrality's wholesale deletions of text and sources is far removed from marking problems for discussion, or making corrections. Horsense (talk) 13:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Are there others who agree (as above) that this article is about a news event highly connected to political events and interpretations? Neutrality (the unsigned bullet above) seems to me to interpret Wiki guidelines to exclude what he doesn't like. I don't know his motivations, but the effect of most of his deletions is clearly to erase or distort simple but major facts, some of which have political significance, and about which relevant opinions have been expressed.

Examples: (1) In the latest revision, <edit 20:27, 22 June> the commentator Greenwald was not contextualized but was deleted as "undue" simply for a single reference. Neutrality explicitly justifies the deletion based on his personal disdain for Greenwald's "ramblings". (See above ('Talk:Greenwald/Reason mag') for a similar argument, and I support Terjen's criticism above.); (2) <edit 20:21> the CNN source does say that the Dr. did not know details of the autopsy: "While Wecht has not examined the records directly, he said media accounts about the ruling puzzled him."; (3) <edit 20:22> the deleted text does not assert 'killing' or 'extinguisher' as reasons for impeachment; (4) <edit 20:25> the deleted text explains why Sicknick received special honors; (5) <edit 20:28> the deleted in-text attribution asserts WHEN the fact was reported, not just 'the fact'; (6) <edit 20:31> there is no SYNTH here, the 'point' being made is that these sourced things all happened on the same day.

The dispute here, I think, is about the policy guidelines on Wp:Balance and Wp:Proportion more than 'undue'. The 'crime' and 'memorial' content must be Balanced by the content that Neutrality has deleted; and then everybody's 'bad writing' can be improved. :-) (All this discussion might be pointless, of course, if it's not my writing that bothers him, but my 'bad' opinions...) Horsense (talk) 13:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

It's just not an aspect with much WP:SUSTAINED coverage, at least right now. A self-published piece by a relatively fringe figure like Greenwald thinking that something is evidence that the media is falling apart isn't noteworthy on its own; he's not an expert and there's no indication people took much note of his comments here. And without his opinions the rationale for focusing on most of the rest falls apart, too. At the start you said that you wanted to overload the article because (implicitly) you felt that opinions like Greenwald's will one day be important and have a lot of secondary coverage, but there's not much evidence of that right now, and WP:NOTCRYSTAL / WP:RECENTISM applies to stuff like that, especially since overall it feels like most coverage is treating the initial reports as more of a blip - most current new coverage of Sicknick's death gives it minimal weight, comparable to what the current version of our article does. --Aquillion (talk) 21:33, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Should the lede summarize the body of the article?

I suggest yes, consistent with our guidelines. I assert that the current lede ([1]), which is all of four sentences, does not cut it. I seek consensus to alter the second paragraph of the lede to read as follows:

The circumstances surrounding Sicknick's death were the subject of confusion for some months. Law enforcement officials initially reported that he had been struck by a fire extinguisher during the attack, leading managers for the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump to assert that Sicknick had been killed by rioters. Two men were eventually charged with assaulting Sicknick and two other officers with a chemical irritant during the storming, but neither was charged with causing Sicknick's death.

I would also be happy to see additions to this text as needed to summarize the article.

The rationale for repeatedly skeletonizing the lede seems to be undue weight (e.g. [2]). While I suppose it is true in a vacuous sense that one can achieve due weight by not having any content, that doesn't really seem consistent with the goal of a lede section. I also note that when this article went through GAR, it was still titled "Brian Sicknick", and hence the lede did not dwell too much on the specifics of his death. But since his death is now the entire subject of the article, the lede should reflect that in order to meet GA criteria. Einsof (talk) 14:39, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to the recent additions by Alalch Emis ([3]), my particular text is no longer necessary. My statements about the unacceptability of the previous four-sentence skeletonized lede still stand, and I will again open a discussion on the above text or similar if the lede is skeletonized again. Einsof (talk) 15:29, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I think it's clear now that there are plenty of relevant and due elements that can make for a non-skeletonized lead, such that questionably /at best/ due elements (the impeachment debate angle for example) aren't perceived as needed to beef it up. — Alalch Emis (talk) 16:06, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

If the article is about Sicknick's death, then it needs to prominently discuss the political uses of his death. This includes inclusion in the impeachment article and repeated claims that he was killed by the Capitol mob, even after the coroner's report. Discussion of this in the body of the article should be summarized in the lede. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 01:26, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

ref

References

Continuing misinformation from politicians

"In April, after the medical examiner's autopsy findings were reported, the official cited by the Wall Street Journal reportedly said that the erroneous information had been privately spread by Capitol Police officers.[29]" I suggest this needs to be followed with a statement about how politicians have continued to spread erroneous information about Sicknick's death. It seems unethical to accuse the Capitol Police of being responsible, when as reported, it's more politicians insisting on the misinformation. 2601:844:4000:F910:853A:329F:7B12:AA83 (talk) 16:53, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

I know there's a dearth of mainstream media articles about this, but plenty of small publications out there have come right out and called the misinformation campaign propaganda. Without mainstream media publications to use as sources, it's difficult to address this in the article; however, ongoing incidents saying Sicknick was killed by the mob (such a the Biden comments) are real and are easy to locate. The article's editors should be aware of this and hedge the text accordingly. Blaming the Capitol Police for the erroneous narrative, as the article does now, is unethical. This needs to be rewritten with at least a tacit understanding about the politization of Sicknick's death. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 02:13, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Changes since GA pass

@Cutlass: I'm responding to your dissatisfaction with the current state of the article, that you expressed in your summary (diff). I understand that you reverted that edit, and so perhaps you changed your mind, but there are probably constructive things to be said -- could you say more about what the problems are, in your view? Regards. P.S. there is a formal path to fix/delist GAs, so there's no need for drastic boldness as far as I can tell. — Alalch Emis (talk) 18:50, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

The article was changed a lot. Since its listing, people have turned the article from one about Brian Sicknick's life to just his death, which is a big difference as a GA. I think it turns it into less of a biography and more into a "Death of" type article. Cutlass^Ciera 20:40, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

The article most certainly is, and always (or if not quite always, for a period prior to nomination) was, intended to be a "Death of"-type article, but at the time of it's nomination it was a paradigmatically flawed article of that sort as the content was structured more like a typical biography article (which is more common, and is something people would easily, but mistakenly, default to). The changes that made the article more of an orthodox "Death of"-type article, whereby it is strongly indicated that the subject is a specific occurrence and not a biography as such, only made the article significantly better. Update: these are some other correctly-framed "Death-of"-type articles: Death of Jeffrey Epstein (GA), Death of Diana, Princess of Wales — Alalch Emis (talk) 21:12, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

True, but the change still makes a big difference, as new content and rewording was made after the GA designation. That is a massive change for a GA as the article has substantially changed. If it was so flawed as an article, how did it become a GA? That doesn't make much sense to me. You could point out that there was a hoax GA, but that was 2012. Things have changed since then. Cutlass^Ciera 12:48, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Still no response on these issues

First, what does this statement have to do with Sicknick's death? If it's supposed to explain why some people thought Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, then it needs to say that. Otherwise it's just extraneous information dropped into the article: "Other police officers were targeted by the pro-Trump mob with hurled fire extinguishers on January 6, in incidents unrelated to Sicknick.[52]" Next, the following statement is written as hearsay. The Wall Street Journal "reportedly" said? Does the reference include the statement or not? "In April, after the medical examiner's autopsy findings were reported, the official cited by the Wall Street Journal reportedly said that the erroneous information had been privately spread by Capitol Police officers.[29]" I also dislike this statement as it tries to place the blame for the misinformation on the Capitol Police, when it's fairly clearly politicians and main stream media who pushed the misinformation. It's unethical to place blame on the Capitol Police. 73.120.83.182 (talk) 15:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not a political football any longer so everyone has lost interest? 73.120.83.182 (talk) 01:48, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the wording of the article suggests the Capitol Police are responsible for the published misinformation about Sicknick's death, and that this is a disservice to a fine organization ready to give their lives to protect the Capitol and the Congress. I've added a few lines of the CP's response to this accusation. Pkeets (talk) 03:02, 23 July 2021 (UTC)