Talk:Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

Awkward

Throwing that comma in the middle of her name explanation is awkward. Someone fix? 23.121.160.252 (talk) 03:09, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Addressed, although I'm not sure this is the best way to do it, and if anyone has a better way feel free to put it in. Daniel Case (talk) 03:58, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Words to avoid here

This article seems to contain several Words to watch. "Nevertheless" "although" "however", for example, are the ones that jump out at me while reading it. i plan to start cleaning this up, would appreciate any help/comments.Melodies1917 (talk) 19:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

"Nevertheless" isn't here when last I checked (like, yesterday) and one of the "howevers" is in a quote.

That MOS section is primarily concerned with statements that seem to be expressing opinions; here I used those words to highlight contrasting facts:

From then on, Gypsy was confined to a wheelchair, although he saw signs that she was indeed healthy enough to walk on her own on several occasions

When the Pitres began to regularly confront her about her treatment of Gypsy and expressed suspicion about her role in her stepmother's health, she left with Gypsy for Slidell, although the family would not know this for several years.

However, she apparently did not find him as desirable in person as he had seemed online.

She believed Dee Dee's claim that she had cancer, even if she knew she could walk and eat solid food, leading her to assent to the regular head shavings. However, she always hoped that doctors would see through the ruse, and she was frustrated that none besides Flasterstein did

Dee Dee said he was "creepy". The two continued their Internet interactions, however, and began developing their plan to kill Dee Dee.

If you think any of these could be worded differently, feel free to say. Daniel Case (talk) 17:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Major cleanup needed

This article has two main problems as I see it: 1. The lede is written in the form of a murder mystery, instead of an encyclopediac summary of the main article. 2. A lot of the article is about things that MAY have happened based on various sources. This needs to be kept to a minimum. In general WP only allows statements that can be verified to be true. (WP:V) Ashmoo (talk) 10:06, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

"Verified to have been published in reliable sources", you mean. Daniel Case (talk) 15:27, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello. I have removed all references and associated prose from "Thought Catalog", which is chiefly a fiction shock-horror site. The article was written by a horror aficionado and chiefly based on recycled Facebook screenies. Sad to say, our BLP policy is not quite based on amateurs republishing Facebook screenshots. There is more work to be done; this article would actually benefit from a judicious application of WP:TNT. Elizium23 (talk) 18:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Other reliable sources we have used in this article, particularly the BuzzFeed story on which The Act is largely based (and which is used extensively as a source here), have cited the Thought Catalog posts as their source; between that and the author's willingness to reprint the Facebook screenshots she was basing her writing on I have at least considered that there is some presumption of reliability. At the very least I would like to have

I would like to ask that you withdraw your "TNT" remark and replace it with something more befitting of the collegiality we all depend on here. Had it not been accompanied by your sneering, dismissive description of the Thought Catalog writer, I might have been willing to excuse it as a temporary lapse of judgement.

Since your editing history does not give one confidence that you're willing to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of researching and editing an article (I really don't see any edits accompanied with boldfaced green numbers that aren't to people's talk pages, not for the last six months), how about you at least list your issues here and we can all work together on addressing them? Daniel Case (talk) 19:11, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, Daniel, while we're discussing each other's contributions: I have serious reservations about your ability to be neutral or disinterested in the topic of this article. That being said, Thought Catalog was roundly panned on WP:RSN by @Newslinger:, @Slatersteven:, and @Collect:, each a quite reputable editor in his own right. The very idea that BuzzFeed and others based their reportage on Thought Catalog is reason enough to cast doubt on their own reliability. Yes, I think WP:TNT could be applicable here: the article is infested with assertions that stem from a largely fictional horror story woven by an amateur. This is a WP:BLP despite the untimely death of its main subject: we should be more solicitous for the privacy and dignity of Gypsy and the rest of the family, who are cast herein in an extremely ghastly and unflattering light. This article panders to prurient and morbid curiosity about allegedly bizarre family drama, rather than reporting facts and narrating a story of criminal and medical wrongdoings. Elizium23 (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I am unsurprised that you chose not to be more specific about your concerns.

As far as what sources whose reliability we do not doubt choose to use, we don't, contrary to what this editor comically thought, apply our editorial policies to our sources ("The real world is not Wikipedia" ... I really think I should write an essay on those lines), and to say that strikes me more as your effort to avoid having to concede something, to push back, than as a rational response, more the sort of thing siblings say to each other in arguments before Mom and Dad than something I'd expect of someone worthy of the title "Wikipedian" (And can you also elucidate why you think I can't be neutral about this? For some reason other than "you dared respond to me", please).

As for what people on RSN think, I'd be delighted if you would provide diffs for me to review. Not that I would disagree with Thought Catalog in general not meeting our standards; I would simply argue for its acceptance in the limited context of this article for the reasons I have outlined above.

As for "infested", in the wake of what you took out, the article still stands up pretty well ... a lot of what seems to, for some reason, bother you, is sourced to other sources like, yes, BuzzFeed and the local newspaper in Springfield, so I rather think that's overstating it. Daniel Case (talk) 02:12, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

RSN discussion here. I am still curious about what compels you to believe that recycled Facebook screenies are BLP-worthy material? Please elaborate on this theory! Elizium23 (talk) 02:16, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

@Elizium23: Actually, upon further review, I have largely accepted your removal of Thought Catalog as most of the material attributed to it is pretty well supported by other sources whose reliability you have not yet taken it upon yourself to question (but I suppose you will stay up all night trying; well, how you spend your holiday weekend is up to you, I guess).

I was able to write a different graf about the duplicate birth certificates—the only one that relied exclusively on TC and where, until earlier today, the place where that detail was introduced. At the time I wrote the article, the documentary and miniseries had not yet been made, and now that they have been, along with a lot more RS coverage from earlier this year when The Act came out, there's less reason to rely on borderline sources. I'm not expecting the new graf to meet with your approval ... honestly I don't really care whether it does or not—but I think it suffices to introduce that information.

Perhaps in the future, instead of just deleting something like that, you might at least consider trying to see if the same information can be found in reliable sources and delightfully surprise any editors who regularly work on the page by replacing the URSes with RSes and rewriting to suit. You might even get a barnstar for it. Daniel Case (talk) 02:57, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Autism is NOT a mental disorder! The wording of he had a mental disorder, either 198.48.146.16 (talk) 02:52, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Commas and semicolons.

Why are there so many commas and semicolons used? There are so many, that halfway through the article I thought that someone had vandalized the page to see if they could add the most commas and semicolons as a joke. It also makes the article read terribly. Paige Matheson (talk) 18:24, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Paige Matheson: I wrote most of this article, and I strive very much to use commas and semicolons properly when I write; semicolons (as in this sentence) have their uses in joining two separate yet not entirely unrelated thoughts and breaking up run-on sentences. Unfortunately, since it's not the easiest thing to teach people who won't be going on to write professionally, a lot of high school English teachers today and in the recent past have giving up trying, what with all the other pressures on them, and so one of the most elegant and subtle devices (when properly used) in the punctuation arsenal just elicits a "My ... brain ... hurts!" reaction from younger readers. See MOS:SEMICOLON for what we say about how to use them properly.

As for the commas, well, I don't know about all of them, but I do tend to stick to the belief that commas go after the state name or date, as well as before, since state names/years are still appositives, when they are used as part of modifying phrases, something entirely too many people seem comfortable dropping today because (I guess) they learned to text without really learning how to write and it slows them down due to the comma's inconvenient placement on the keyboard.

Actually, as the editor who did the majority of writing on this article, I am seriously offended by your comments (really ... suggesting it looks like the article was vandalized? Please walk one foot in front of the other, touch your nose with your eyes closed, and recite the alphabet backwards), which have more of a random drive-by venting feel to them than a constructive effort to improve the encyclopedia, and I strongly suggest you consider an apology (Remember, sometimes when you summon spirits from the vasty deep, they may actually come). If not ... well, nothing's stopping you from starting a version of this article on the Simple English Wikipedia, one that will presumably use only simple sentences, set aside in stand-alone paragraphs, like your comment above.

And if you really do want to be constructive, perhaps you could list some examples of where you think the use of commas or semicolons is excessive or unnecessary. Daniel Case (talk) 19:24, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Additional videos from official news accounts

I found:

• "Authorities investigate possible finial scheme involving murder suspect". TMJ4. 2015-06-17.

Obviously there is no hard and fast rule regarding which videos should be in the EL section but maybe consider the most prominent news organizations. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:19, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Minor change

I noticed in the notes that Gypsy Rose Lee is referred to as a stripper. This is untrue, she was a burlesque performer. I realize a lot of people don't know the difference, but there is a significant difference. I do not know how to edit the notes myself give the way they are embedded, I would appreciate someone correcting this. SnarkyValkyrie (talk) 18:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@SnarkyValkyrie: That's how the BuzzFeed story that inspired me to write this article in the first place described her ... I suppose perhaps it's a common misconception. If you've got reliable sources saying that she was burlesque performer and not a stripper, or better yet that people are mistaken to think that she is, we can put them in. (Of course, since it's only mentioned in an endnote that people are only going to see by mousing over or reading down that far ...) Daniel Case (talk) 03:22, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

“Another escape attempt”: seems something was removed

> Since 2001, Gypsy had attended science fiction and fantasy conventions,[10] sometimes in costume, since she could blend in, even in her wheelchair. At an event in 2011, she made what may have been another escape attempt that ended when her mother found her in a hotel room with a man she had met online. Again Dee Dee produced the paperwork giving Gypsy's false, younger birth date and threatened to inform the police.

This language seems to imply that another similar occurrence was mentioned beforehand, but there is none to be found. I’m hesitant to fix the wording until jt can be confirmed that the other text was not wrongfully deleted. Thesowismine (talk) 08:10, 8 October 2021 (UTC)