Talk:Apex (gang)

Changing the title of the article

I suggest changing the name of the article to "Sudanese Crime in Victoria", and there be a redirect from Apex to the new page. The reason is twofold, first based on the statements of the police, the gang may not really exist and second the topic has become so much broader than the story of the Apex gang, and has entered into the political debate. (Smellytap (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2018 (UTC))

This whole article is problematical for a number of reasons. Not sure about a new article dedicated to Sudanese crime but the matter certainly needs some thought and attention. I'll get back to it when I have time. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 11:52, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

After recent changes which appeared to reinstate a lot of detail from a previous old revision, with access-dates in 2016, I have posted templates at the top about the need for improvement, and started with the History section. There are still multiple issues and I invite editors to discuss here rather than revert changes and start edit wars. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:36, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Later that day... I decided to wade in and try to improve the article myself. I still think that it's a bit long for its relative importance, and the citations need review and possible cleanup. Perhaps also redirects or renaming as per Smellytap's suggestion, but I'm done for now. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 05:54, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd strongly oppose a change in title to "Sudanese Crime in Victoria", it's totally loaded and there's no evidence to suggest the "African Gang Crisis" is anything more than race baiting by a handful of journalists and politicians. The overwhelming majority of crimes committed in Victoria are committed by Australians (71.3%) in comparison to the Sudanese who commit a tiny fraction of crimes (1.1%). Bacondrum (talk) 02:24, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I tend to agree with you re the race baiting Bacondrum, so perhaps that's not the best title... Was just thinking about the relative unimportance of the original "Apex gang" and wondering if it should be subsumed under a more general title. I noticed an article Crime in Melbourne earlier and then thought that perhaps it all belongs there. It would also help keep on top of duplicate editing and the potential for edit wars and/or vandalism. What do you think? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:37, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

It's a hard one, I think adding Apex to the Crime in Melbourne page would be giving undue weight. At the same time having a page dedicated to a gang that most likely does not exist seems odd to say the least. Maybe just delete the page? The gang most likely does not exist, the topic is loaded and there's a lot of racist assumptions that it rides on - at the same time the hysteria surrounding the none-existent gang has been reported on so widely and may thus be noteworthy as a kind of racist panic/hysteria. I'd be okay with deleting the page. It's definitely a hard one. Bacondrum (talk) 02:58, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Either way, you've improved the page a lot...maybe we could just work on whittling it down to an appropriate weight? Bacondrum (talk) 03:12, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

@Bacondrum: I think that your last suggestion is best for now. I was thinking that adding it to the Crime in Melbourne page would reduce its weight, as it could just as easily be a sub-section under an "African gangs crisis" hysteria section... And getting an article completely deleted involves a bit of a process, I think. But I'll come back to it with fresh eyes another day. Either way, a bit of trimming of irrelevant details won't hurt. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 05:10, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

@Laterthanyouthink: Sounds like a plan. Bacondrum (talk) 06:27, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

@Bacondrum:Just coming back to this, I think that merging this with Crime in Melbourne is the way to go. I'll be putting up some templates first (in case anyone else wants to discuss the proposed merge) but think that I could improve the latter page significantly and also reduce a lot of the unnecessary clutter in this article. It could take a while. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 08:12, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@Laterthanyouthink: Sounds like a plan, does seem undue to have an entire page dedicated to a vague notion of a youth street gang that no one is certain actually exists...it has been major news though and the hysteria around it did play a significant part in the last state election - I'm all for it. Bacondrum (talk) 00:25, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Content and further discussion on merging the article

@Bacondrum: The reason for my edit was to explain the origin of the name, and if the fact is that the "gang" started with offending by a few South Sudanese youth living in Apex Street, then this should be stated. I couldn't see anything in other articles disputing this. The rest of the article shows that by the time it became known to police, it had spread way beyond its origins and included over 100 kids of differing origins. Mention of South Sudanese at an early point also does help to explain a thread of logic (albeit distorted by certain parties) as to how and why the whole issue became politicised. The origin of the name does demand explanation for a Wiki article, IMO (and as previously discussed, more work is needed on this article as a whole). As an alternative, it could be written into the history section, but that first para. would need a bit of rewriting. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, restore it if you feel it belongs in the lede, or place it in the history, whichever you feel works better. I was just erring on the side of caution. bacondrum (talk) 05:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I decided to just do a rollback for now. Will review the History section and the rest when I get back to it and perhaps discuss further. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 09:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Merge proposal under way

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was Merge. Bacondrum (talk) 22:29, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

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I don't believe meets this article really meets WP:N in the first place, and could do with trimming of a lot of unnecessary detail, before merging into Crime in Melbourne. The disputed entity called Apex, if it existed, is now defunct, and most of what the newspapers reported was driven by certain parties politicising the issue of crimes committed by youths of African (mainly Sudanese) origin for various purposes. I do think that this merits mention and some explanation in the main Melbourne article, but the Apex article has wandered off topic into this more general area which is more appropriately dealt with in the main article. Neither article should be listing specific instances of crime or disturbances in as much detail as this one does. See also WP:RECENTISM and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:13, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

After reviewing the Crime in Australia article and its spin-offs, I decided to be bold and also initiate some merges from city to state level. You can see the discussion here. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:28, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm all for your proposed changes. A page on crime on Victoria would be much more suitable, and would be a more worthwhile read. Both Crime in Melbourne and Apex (gang) belong on a page covering the state rather than individually. It would be good to have a page like this, talking about the history of crime in the state, the enviably low crime rates, giving crime families and figures context - the Carlton Crew and related gang war, the Pettingill family, Squizzy Taylor, the Mallee connections to organised crime etc...rural locations with surprisingly high crime rates in contrast with Melbourne etc (obviously these are just suggestions)...it would make for an interesting and informative page and could give some context and even absorb many pages that are truly wanting in regard to WP:N, but are worthy of some mention. Bacondrum (talk) 07:28, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Once you get the page rolling, I'll happily contribute. Bacondrum (talk) 07:30, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I've now created Crime in Victoria (as per other dicussions) and merged Crime in Melbourne into that one. I will work on merging this one as well but it needs to be drastically trimmed. It's full of unnecessary detail, as per WP:TMI. (I'm a bit busy on other projects so my work on this will be intermittent.) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 06:34, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Nice one, I'll merge Apex this morning. Cheers Bacondrum (talk) 22:28, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.