Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 May 28

28 May 2007

Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby

Shawn Hornbeck (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)

Procedural nomination, either the page should be salted to prevent recreation if the concern for privacy is so great, or it should have been listed for AFD instead of speedied. Personally I think that both Hornbeck and Ownby are non-notable by themselves, but I would like to see greater consensus amongst the community than an administrator's unilateral decision. Therefore, I call for an AfD on procedural grounds. Past AfD was a "no consensus". Calwatch 01:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Deleting administrator's response:

This pair of deletions represents another opportunity for the community to provide input into whether and to what extent concern for the well-being and privacy of living persons will be taken into account in deciding on the content of the encyclopedia.

The subjects of these articles are young people (Ben is 13 and Shawn is 15) who were living otherwise non-notable lives as American teenagers until each of them was kidnapped and was mistreated in a horrifying way. One of them, at the age of 13, was subjected to more than a dozen sexual assaults over a period of several days; the other's kidnapping separated him from his family for more than four years of brutalization and abuse. The ordeals suffered by these young people are harrowing to contemplate; the only saving grace is that ultimately they were rescued alive; and any decent person must hope that they are now able to overcome what they suffered and lead successful lives.

In doing so, one of the things that each of them will have to learn to live with is the pervasive publicity that they have now received in the mass media, including on the Internet. Ordinarily, the media, at least in the United States, do not report the names of victims of sexual assaults, and certainly not of victims who are minors. In this case, though, there has been massive publicity. This largely is an artifact of the fact that before these teens were known to have been sexually assaulted, they were "missing children" and therefore rightly the subject of publicity as their families and communities sought to locate and rescue them. Once that had occurred, perhaps the media and the families decided that the publicity when the boys were being searched for was already so pervasive that relevation of what had happened was a fait accompli and no steps to belatedly safeguard confidentiality could now be implemented. If that is so, it is a sad and troubling situation that raises a host of ethical issues for those media, but I see no reason that Wikipedia should knowingly make a bad situation worse.

We strive to create a broad-based and comprehensive encyclopedia covering an enormous variety of subject matters. For what it is worth, I am firmly anchored well to the "inclusionist" side of the administrator corps and am hardly someone who routinely goes out-of-process and starts randomly deleting things. But encyclopedic breadth does not exclude consideration of other relevant concerns, We have a duty to take into account the predictable impact of our articles upon living subjects, and in my opinion at least, especial solicitude is owed to the needs of young teenagers who are the innocent victims of terrible crimes that already will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

I do not contend that the fact that these boys' names and family circumstances have been publicized in other sources, and that they participated in discussing with journalists what had happened to them, are wholly irrelevant in deciding whether and how we should include such information. Yet, at the end of the day we have to decide what we believe is appropriate to be included in our encyclopedia, in which we hope that Wikipedia and our articles will be immortal. Whether today, or twenty years from now, if someone Googles (or whatever the then equivalent in later years is) the names of one of these people, should the first hit be what happened to them when they were 13? I would say no, and I would like to believe that a strong consensus of the Wikipedia community would agree. Note that I am not saying we shouldn't describe the general gist of what happened. The full story is still recounted in the article about the (alleged) criminal, Michael J. Devlin, although there is resistance to my editorial decision there to excise the victims' names. The question posed by these deletions is whether further publicizing these victims' names, geographical locations, and family circumstances will make us a better encyclopedia or make contributing to it more rewarding to any of us. My view is that it will not. See also my prior comments on related issues at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Doc glasgow#Outside view by Newyorkbrad and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/QZ Deletion dispute#Outside view by Newyorkbrad.

Accordingly, I ask that the deletions be sustained. Newyorkbrad 01:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Agree - There should have been an AfD, per Calwatch. In addition, Newyorkbrad should be barred from admin actions for at least a week as a punishment. Wjhonson 01:33, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Either the community will endorse my action or it won't, but after the thought I have given to this entire set of issues over the past several months and in light of the ongoing community-wide discussion of these issues, I find your suggestion that I need to be "punished" to be ... well, I'm not going to characterize it, though I hope that other participants in this discussion might. Newyorkbrad 01:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Undelete/keep undeleted Hornbeck, who's been featured in many mainstream places and is using his fame for good[1]. No current opinion on Ownby, although I'm leaning toward a listing for further opinion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:40, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I acknowledge that H is a closer call than O, although I am sorry to see back-pedalling from your initial understanding of this action expressed at User talk:Tony Sidaway#Another suggested deletion. Newyorkbrad 01:47, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
    • If we want to work that into existing policy, then that's fine, but I was also probably a little hasty now that I'm doing more research into this one. Even so, whether we draw the line or not is not a situation for one person to make. I may agree with your deletion of one or both in principle, but that doesn't mean we can leave the rest of the community out of the discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:51, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Agreed, especially when this "consensus" was made on the talk page of another administrator. While well-intentioned, it needs to go before the whole community. Calwatch 01:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
• Send to AFD, but keep the article deleted meanwhile for BLP concerns. I originally deleted it as what appeared to be a simple copy and paste of the old contents, but it appeared to have been another administrator doing it, so I undid my recreation protection of the page, but deleted the poor copying.. Now is a good time for an AFD now that the news about him has vanished, so people can look at whether he is notable or not with a clear mind, hopefully. Cowman109^Talk 01:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Per the cache, it's well-referenced and is not negative in tone - there's no BLP policy concerns here, and that should be noted. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I will acknowledge that as well. If we are going to have articles on either or both of these two people, the articles were well-written and reasonably referenced. That type of concern was not the basis for my action in deleting them. Newyorkbrad 01:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Restore both articles and permanently remove Newyorkbrad as administrator for his disgusting, arbitrary and grotesque censorship. What are we going to do now-remove the names of all alleged crime victim's? This will be the end of Wikipedia as a serious source. John celona 02:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)