Talk:2022 Brink's theft

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Launchballer talk 18:40, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that two years ago today millions of dollars worth of jewelry was stolen from the back of a truck while one driver was getting food at a California truck stop and the other one was asleep in the cab?

• Source: "Just after 2 a.m. the next day, at an unremarkable truck stop right at the Los Angeles County line, the guard driving the Brink’s truck went inside to grab a bite. His co-pilot was asleep in a berth in the cab. When the driver returned 27 minutes later, dozens of bags of precious gems and watches sent by Malki and 14 other dealers estimated to be worth up to $100 million were gone.". New York; May 17, 2023.

• ALT1: ... that the jewelers victimized in the theft from a Brink's truck two years ago today admit they undervalued their wares but argue the company should still pay them full value because it was negligent? Source: "So two months later, Brink’s sued them in a New York federal court, in part accusing the jewelers of breach of contract and of fraud because they had allegedly undervalued their items. 'Brink’s believes that each Defendant seeks to recover more from Brink’s than is permitted under the Contract,' the company wrote in its suit ... Two weeks later, 14 of the 15 victims countersued Brink’s in Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeking $200 million in total damages. (Since then, three have settled for an undisclosed sum.) They accuse the company of negligence for putting their valuables in a lightly protected truck, especially after being warned of heightened security risk at the expo." Same source as above
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Barry Burton
• Comment: As indicated I would really for this to run on July 11. I will be asking at WT:DYK for some expedited review.

Created by Daniel Case (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 279 past nominations.

Daniel Case (talk) 06:06, 4 July 2024 (UTC).

• Someone else can review this, but if I promote I'll be changing 'two years ago today' to 'July 11, 2022' as hooks must not be likely to change and I'll be promoting a version of ALT0 truncated at 'truck' per WP:DYKTRIM.--Launchballer 23:12, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Review underway. I fully reviewed but the edit conflict erased my work. GRRR. Lightburst (talk) 23:33, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Thanks for an interesting article. Note: Earwig did not work for me so I spot checked the majority of sources and found that they are accurate and not closely paraphrased. AlT0 is exactly 200 characters and ALT1 is 198 (I struck ALT1 because I do not find it WP:DYKINT. I think ALT0 is the most interesting and it is confirmed by citation in the article. The article has 13 citations cited to Bloomberg which is a cartoon-illustrated article. I do not see why it would not be reliable but it is a curious way to present a serious subject. Also:Launchballer Suggest you do not trim the hook because your suggestion would remove all interest and it is 200 characters so complies with our guidelines. Lightburst (talk) 23:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I suggest that the first lead paragraph be rewritten; at the moment it reads like a story. See MOS:OPEN for recommendations. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:32, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

I've divested the lead of extraneous content and moved the third paragraph up (it makes sense to have 'this was nicked' next to 'here's how'). Airship can adjudicate as to whether the theft of millions of dollars worth of jewelry is interesting on its own.--Launchballer 06:39, 5 July 2024 (UTC

It is within the 200-character limit, as noted. If it were not, I would not have submitted it. Tell me, what exactly is the point of having that limit if, after taking steps to comply with it, someone nevertheless takes it upon themselves to wade into a discussion and suggest it needs to be trimmed for some reason other than being too wordy?

Jewel thefts are perhaps interesting on their own. Jewel thefts that occur when one of the guards is sleeping nearby and the other one is off getting fast food are even more interesting, and if we can fit that all into a coherently-written 200-character hook, we should. Daniel Case (talk) 17:42, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

tone tag

BalinKingOfMoria, can you point to specific issues with tone? Valereee (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• I removed the tag. It's not okay to do this and not explain why in the talkpage, especially when this is being displayed in the mainpage for DYK. Morogris (✉ • ✎) 14:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry for not explaining the tag sooner (I didn't intend to start any arguments with it...). I'm not sure if I can explain my thought process in super concrete terms—the prose just feels somehow colloquial and/or editorialized to me at times—but I'll try to give a few examples:

  - "Some of the jewelers believe that the theft was an inside job, or at least that Brink's may know more than it has publicly disclosed."

  - "Some of the jewelers have sued the company, however, admitting that they like many of their colleagues routinely understated the value of the jewelry being transported on manifests they filed with Brink's...."

  - "... were getting ready to close up and pack after three days..."

  - "But Beaty said he had gone into the sleeper at 3:39 p.m. the preceding afternoon..."

  - "Deputies also could not resolve another contradiction."

  - "Witnesses in the area at the time were able to give law enforcement one possible lead."

  - "The jewelers, incredulous at what seemed to them to be weak and lax security, filed a separate suit two weeks later..."

  - "For those who have continued in the business, other difficulties remain."

  (Disclaimer: These are from the current version of the article, rather than the specific revision from when I originally added the tag.)

  Of course, maybe I'm way off base and the article is totally fine as-is—looking at the discussion below, it does seem like a lot of people think so.

  BalinKingOfMoria (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Qwirkle Since you re-instated the tag, could you explain what's wrong with the tone? The burden of proof is on you and the person who added it originally. Morogris (✉ • ✎) 15:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Why don’t you start by looking at the first paragraph. Tell me if you think that looks like a lead paragraph from an encyclopedia, or the opening of a true-crime pulp article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwirkle (talk • contribs)

• @Qwirkle: I don't think you understand how the burden of proof works, so I'll make this easier for you. Please specify what you think needs to be fixed or amended and suggest what changes would be better. In fact, consider making the edit yourself since you were bold enough to put a tag in the article. Morogris (✉ • ✎) 17:31, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I support removing the tone tag. The only real "issue" I see personally is that the opening sentence is a bit unusual compared to MOS:LEADSENTENCE; if people want to improve it, I don't see why they wouldn't just do so directly. I don't see anything else that justifies tagging the entire article as having tone issues. Dylnuge ^{(Talk • Edits)} 17:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I think if that's what's justifying the tag (as it seems to for the supposedly semi-retired Qwirkle), it's because when I write an article about an event I want to make that clear from the very beginning. Since often these involve real, named living people, if you boldface those names you give people the excuse to start making the article a biography.

I'm sure some people would be a lot more comfortable with a lede that began "The 2022 Brinks theft took place ..." I would direct them to read MOS:BOLDAVOID (If the article's title does not lend itself to being used easily and naturally in the first sentence, the wording should not be distorted in an effort to include it. Instead, simply describe the subject in normal English, avoiding unnecessary redundancy.) and per that last part MOS:REDUNDANCY. I know from experience that if we were to begin the way I think those objecting here would have it, the way I demonstrated above, that we would inevitably have to revert well-intended edits to the effect of "The 2022 Brink's theft occurred on July 11, 2022, in Lebec, California, United States, when jewelry valued in the millions of dollars was stolen from the back of a Brink's truck parked at a truck stop." Apparently some editors believe people are incapable of reading and understanding bold text.

Furthermore WP:TONE makes it pretty clear that the tag is related to an editors choice of words, that it might be too informal, colloquial or jargon-heavy. It has nothing to do with narrative structure. Daniel Case (talk) 17:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

As a quick glance at WP:TONE will show, that is simply untrue. There is an entire section devoted to...well, let's just quote in full:

News style or persuasive writing
As a matter of policy, Wikipedia is not written in news style (in any sense other than some use of the inverted pyramid, above), including tone. The encyclopedic and journalistic intent and audience are different. Especially avoid bombastic wording, attempts at humor or cleverness, reliance on primary sources, editorializing, recentism, pull quotes, journalese, and headlinese.

Similarly, avoid news style's close sibling, persuasive writing, which has many of those faults and more of its own, most often various kinds of appeals to emotion and related fallacies. This style is used in press releases, advertising, op-ed writing, activism, propaganda, proposals, formal debate, reviews, and much tabloid and sometimes investigative journalism. It is not Wikipedia's role to try to convince the reader of anything, only to provide the salient facts as best they can be determined, and the reliable sources for them.

I like the way you seem to have purposely misformatted this text so that anyone responding to it has to open up the edit window in order to respond. In any event this is not under WP:TONE, so you are purposely misrepresenting the content you purport to be linking to.

While the text you quoted is further down on that page, I don't see this as "news style" ... I worked as a journalist for some time, and if I had been writing this as a news story it would have read very differently. I do not see how briefly summarizing what happened in the first graf of the intro makes it "news style". I direct your attention to MOS:OPEN:

The first paragraph should define or identify the topic with a neutral point of view, but without being too specific. It should establish the context in which the topic is being considered by supplying the set of circumstances or facts that surround it. If appropriate, it should give the location and time.

I also do not see what point you are trying to make (or indeed, if you are trying to make one to begin with) by quoting that whole graf on persuasive writing. Unless you have a definition of persuasive writing so broad it extends to "trying to persuade the reader that the event being described actually happened". Daniel Case (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This article looks like it was written by a newsie channeling Ann Rule, when she was having a bad day. Qwirkle (talk) 21:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Wow, you're so cute. That remark sounds like the sort of thing movie critics used to say just to get bigger blurbs on onesheets in order to keep their employers happy. And, really, we should avoid commenting on contributors by making comments about content that disparage the creator of said content without offering any constructive criticism. We let people get away with that end run far too often.

I request that you apologize to me and strike that comment through if you're serious about continuing this discussion. And if you really want to impress me, write a draft of the opening paragraph as you would have it, mindful of MOS:OPEN above. Daniel Case (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I did some rewriting. Cwater1 (talk) 19:04, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Which, sadly, I had to revert. Like Data we don't use contractions outside of quoted matter in inline encyclopedic prose, and by making "some of the jewelers" into just "some", you invited a {{who}} tag ... I had written in that way with that in mind. Daniel Case (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I do apologize. I did try improve the article, not trying to be disruptive. I didn't realize about how we don't usually write contractions. Cwater1 (talk) 21:49, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

A lot of MOS rules many of us have learned in the breach. Nothing wrong with that if you learn from it; that's how life works a lot of the time. Daniel Case (talk) 03:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)