2

Further to this chat, I find topics about non-notorious individual victims of crime distateful.

I understand it may be in the public interest, and/or relevant to public policy (e.g. because of police involvement), to ask a question about Eric Garner's death; conversely I dislike a question of the form, "This newspaper said that this person was raped and killed. Is that really true, what are the details?", even if the story's being published in some local newspaper seems to make it notable.

Sometimes you might close this type of question as being a "Question about unresolved current events". If the question is about a historic crime (Jack the Ripper), then it's more likely to be notorious.

But when it's a specific modern person and not already notorious I don't like it. It's gruesome. It's kind of an invasion of privacy and maybe sensationalizing.

Maybe it's not in the public interest, nor in the interest of this site, nor interesting to users of this site, to host such a topic.

2
  • A related answer to a previous meta-topic is here.
    – ChrisW
    Mar 20, 2017 at 22:29
  • 3
    I have joked about needing a "None of our damned business" close reason. This seems to be another example to support that.
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Mar 21, 2017 at 2:34

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

If the claim involves victim blaming (eg "this assault victim was a slut who had sex with six other men the previous night"), then I'd look at the question very closely before deciding whether we want it or not.

However, the question referred to doesn't really engage in victim blaming. You could argue that it's saying that the women chose a bad boyfriend/husband, but it's not condoning the violence.

The only thing I find distasteful about the question is that it's the Daily Stormer, but that's another kettle of fish (or can of worms): Non notable claims, made only on hate and or conspiracy sites, should be deleted

1
  • The accepted or most popular answer to that topic ("Non notable claims, made only on hate and or conspiracy sites, should be deleted") appears to be "no: they're acceptable, not deleted".
    – ChrisW
    Mar 21, 2017 at 18:19
1

If a topic is truly notable, the cat is out of the bag. People are already talking about the claim and clarifying the truth makes things better for everyone. There is no violation of privacy or sensationalizing.

On the other hand, the problem of that question is that it was about a non-notable claim, and it was closed as such. Therefore, I do agree with your comments.

The question was deleted by the author, but in any case deletion should only apply when attempts to salvage the question have failed - it's another way of solving the problem.

6
  • 1
    Normally any news in a local newspaper might be "notable" in the sense that "people are likely to believe it". But it can seem like muck-raking, I don't know, and when it's not already national news then better not broadcast it further. Maybe your calling it a "problem" means you do agree.
    – ChrisW
    Mar 20, 2017 at 23:17
  • @ChrisW If a local newspaper talks about it, and that's it, it would not be notable by our standards.
    – Sklivvz
    Mar 21, 2017 at 7:55
  • I didn't know that. I thought the standard was only, "Published such that several, more than just a few, people might believe it" ... which, would exclude jokes and fictional movies ... and exclude emails, and private facebook pages, and "my friend told me" (too small an audience) ... but include facebook memes, more-or-less-well-known public blogs, any printed books, and presumably also any local newspaper (to pick the first one from a list of US local papers, the Alaska Dispatch News with a circulation of 50,000).
    – ChrisW
    Mar 21, 2017 at 18:06
  • @ChrisW no, where a claim is published or who makes the claim are just proxies. The notability standard is always the number of people believing the claim. If a famous person or paper makes a claim that no one believes, it'd be still not notable.
    – Sklivvz
    Mar 23, 2017 at 0:22
  • Sorry to argue or misunderstand, but if an local newspaper (with a circulation of 50,000) publishes a plausible story, then a sufficiently significant number of people (e.g. the 40,000 people who read the newspaper) will believe the claim, isn't that so? I think it's believed by sufficiently many people, and is therefore "notable" per this site's definition of notable. What it isn't (IMO) is something worth being skeptical of, etc.
    – ChrisW
    Mar 23, 2017 at 0:33
  • @ChrisW as I said it's not necessarily notable, it's a proxy for the real criteria. While we allow it as a shortcut, it's not always a reliable way of determining notability. The correct measure is always showing that many people believe it (in other words, the claim should be repeated many times on the internet). It's like saying "so-and-so is a famous actress because she was in this famous movie". It's very possible that it's true, but there are many actors in famous movies that don't achieve fame at all.
    – Sklivvz
    Mar 23, 2017 at 0:46

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .