Talk:List of heists in the United Kingdom

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 Amkgp (talk) 06:13, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

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The Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III by Rembrandt

• ... that the Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III (pictured) has been stolen four times? Source: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/how-rembrandts-were-stolen-81-times-432/
  • ALT1:... that the Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III (pictured) by Rembrandt has been stolen four times from the same place? Source: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/how-rembrandts-were-stolen-81-times-432/
  • ALT2:... that it wasn't actually Kempton Bunton who stole the Portrait of the Duke of Wellington (pictured) by Goya, it was his son? Source: https://lady.co.uk/theft-duke-wellington

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Die BIF – Blätter Idealer Frauenfreundschaften
• Comment: ALT2 is about a different picture, therefore the image would be File:Francisco_Goya_-_Portrait_of_the_Duke_of_Wellington.jpg

Moved to mainspace by Mujinga (talk). Self-nominated at 14:12, 11 July 2020 (UTC).

• This is not a full review yet, anyone else is welcome to comment. I have some general questions. Which sources are there that satisfy WP:LISTN? In other words, is just the these two articles here and here, which talk about the list as a whole? There appears to be no introduction according to WP:SALLEAD, and just a really long block of text which is difficult to read. Is there a reason why the list is not chronological as per WP:SALORDER? Is there a reason why the article is called "List", but the actual list is called "Table"? Again, these are general questions, not DYK failures. Overall it is an interesting list. Thanks for considering. Flibirigit (talk) 00:07, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

• Hiya thanks for the comments, I probably won't be able to respond until Monday at the earliest. Mujinga (talk) 09:07, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
• So to reply:
• "Which sources are there that satisfy WP:LISTN?" well i would go by the first criterion of WP:CSC, namely "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia" (although there are a few independently notable entries without their own wikipage). I'm not sure the list itself needs to be notable but if it does yes those BBC and Guardian links would serve.
• "There appears to be no introduction according to WP:SALLEAD" - I did read and follow this guideline (as well as examining some featured lists) but it's my first proper attempt at a stand-alone list which I'd like to bring to featured status so any feedback is welcome, happy to change/add stuff on specific points. I do feel that I've given background info and the selection criteria in that first paragraph, as the guideline suggests.
• "Is there a reason why the list is not chronological as per WP:SALORDER?" - this isn't currently a chronological list.
• "Is there a reason why the article is called "List", but the actual list is called "Table"?" - this I did purely to avoid repetition, but I've changed the table title to "List". Mujinga (talk) 12:51, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

• There has definitely been a lot of work put into this list and I see potential to become a featured list. I still feel that the list should have a lead section which highlights the criteria for inclusion into the list, and explains in a sentence why the list is important. Flibirigit (talk) 15:31, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

•  Reviewing... since I see there have been changes. Flibirigit (talk) 00:09, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

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

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: List was moved to the mainspace on July 6 and nominated within time. Length of prose is adequate. Sourcing requirements are met for the prose and list. Prose and list are neutral in tone. No plagiarism issues detected. Hooks are reasonably interesting, properly cited inline and verified with the sources. All images used in the list are properly licensed on the Commons. The nominated photos are clear at a low resolution and would enhance the hooks. QPQ requirement met. Flibirigit (talk) 00:31, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

I'm a sucker for a good list, especially of heists - but I'm not sure about the inclusion criteria. The lead says that the haul needs to be worth £1 million or be "notable for other reasons". Can we define the latter a bit more clearly? Two entries - Two Forms (Divided Circle) and Linwood bank robbery - are significantly below the £1 million criterion and don't seem to be incredibly notable. There was a paltry £1000 reward for the sculpture, and Linwood seems mostly known because policemen were shot, not for what was taken. Any thoughts? -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 12:00, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes I see what you are saying here and the same issue was also a concern for the DYK reviewer. I added Two Forms (Divided Circle) because the artist is Barbara Hepworth and the theft received quite a lot of press coverage at the time; and Linwood bank robbery because (like you say) the heist involved the deaths of two police officers, which in the UK is notable (although the wikipage itself needs some work, Linwood does crop up in quite a lot of the sources used here). I was at a loss before as to what to do here, now it seems quite obvious we could just set the inclusion criteria as "required to have taken over £1 million at contemporary rates" and drop these two heists. Setting the criteria based on haul also keeps out attempted heists eg the Millenium Dome diamond and "contemporary rates" means older heists are still included. Mujinga (talk) 14:25, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's exactly it. Makes it much easier to keep the page up to date and will reduce random crimes being added in the future because someone thought they were notable for other reasons. Well done on the list itself, hope to see it on DYK soon! -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 20:20, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughts, I changed the inclusion criteria, much simpler this way. Please (of course) feel free to add/remove stuff, after the DYK I'll prob put this to peer review then submit it as a featured list. Mujinga (talk) 20:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Good idea, looks great now. I've added a few things from recent years. Have you thought about including a column that specifies what was stolen - 'paintings', 'diamonds', 'cash' etc.? Oh, and if you separated the original value and inflation-adjusted value into two columns, the table could be sorted by value.I know tables can get unwieldy quickly, so just a suggestion. -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 20:51, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Nice one for the additions, that is nuts that the Tamara Ecclestone robbery was £50 million!? Those are interesting ideas on improving the table, I can see the current structure doesn't make the values easily sortable and your solution seems good. Personally I don't feel like putting in the legwork to revise the table right now to be honest, but it's worth discussing more, especially with an upcoming peer review. Mujinga (talk) 17:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Yeah the £50 million was widely reported so I went with it - might of course just be the claimed value for insurance purposes, but that's what we have sources for. I might give the additional columns a shot in a sandbox and see how it looks. I'll get back to you on that. -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 22:13, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay, took a shot at it, have a look and let me know if I should integrate it on the main page: User:Arcaist/sandbox -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 16:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Wow that new version looks much better. It is indeed good to separate the original and 2019 values, just as you suggested. On a quick look I'd say the references for the value are better on the original column, then we can put the reference currently on "amount" on the "2019 value" header. What do you think? Nice one on finding a better reference for the Portland tiara, but it still doesn't give a real figure, it just says "millions" instead of "national treasure"! I'll look into that when I have more time, someone must have put a figure on it. And the Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III entry I made should be different so it can be sorted properly. By all means put this version of the table on the page if you want to, these minor issues can be sorted out when it's there.

On the Ecclestone £50 million, I'm just flabbergasted one person could have so much expensive jewellery! Cheers, Mujinga (talk) 20:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

New table looks great Arcaist! I fixed the Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III value and had a look around for the Portland tiara, I'm surprised there isn't an insurance valuation but seems to be everyone just says "worth millions". I was pondering how else to improve the table, there was your suggestion to list the type of heist, I'm not quite sure how best to do that, since some might tick multiple boxes. We could also have a column indicating if the goods were recovered or not, but like you say it's good not to overclutter the table. Right now I think it looks good. I'm wondering if the picture of the golden toilet would be better in the table for America. And there's a small issue for 2020 heists having a 2019 value, I suppose the inflation index can also work the other way round, 2020 → 2019 prices. Is that worth doing? The less that needs updating manually the better I suppose. Mujinga (talk) 16:39, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Awesome, glad to hear you like the slight layout change, and the corrections are great too. I think for the moment - i.e. before review - this is completely fine, and I wouldn't add more columns. I think the 'recovered' column would be the most useful overall. Ah, and you're right I hadn't thought about the 2020-2019 issue. Yeah, I think I'll just change that to be calculated backwards (if that's possible in the syntax). Edit: Just check the inflation template: "Currently it isn't possible to "de-inflate" a value to what it would have been in a previous year." so we could either just add a * to the bottom explaining it, or change it next year? Any ideas? -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 17:16, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

hmm yes i see what you mean about de-inflation and tried it just in case the documentation was out of date but it doesn't seem to work ... could request that feature, but i already requested to force inflation/fn to be used and nobody seems that interested

i think the key thing here is to leave as little need for updating as possible... so for templates we have:

• Format price which is cool, didn't know that one, doesn't need updating
• Inflation which can use an end year but can be dated using Inflation/year and will presumably update when the new figures are released (?)

so i guess what we need to do is figure out a way to call the inflation-related column - "contemporary value" maybe and then like you say add a footnote explaining the situation, and if the footnote could be auto-updated as regards years that would be best Mujinga (talk) 12:52, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Honestly that sounds like the perfect solution - "contemporary value" plus a small note at the bottom. Let me know if I can help with any of that. -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 16:41, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I've had a go at making a note, can't say I'm 100% satisfied because the template reference says "UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017)" and I'd much rather have it say "UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2019)". Feel free to rephrase! Also I spent quite some time puzzling over it but don't see a way to autoupdate the years, perhaps that's a good thing and it should be done manually anyway. Mujinga (talk) 10:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Further I'm tweaking the table a bit, looking at recent featured lists and reading through Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility#Tables. On the Portland Tiara, I've changed the value to "£ millions" which I feel is more accurate, but still not sortable of course. Mujinga (talk) 11:14, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I'd say that's about as good as it can get for now. Agree with you on the slight manual updates in the future - you could add an invisible line of text at the top of the table if you wanted to explain it further for whoever might update it. It really just needs one update a year. Great work! -- Arcaist ^{contribs • talk} 13:27, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Heist at Heathrow

There were other heists in the early 2000s. Million s were stolen. They should be included here.180.150.115.177 (talk) 02:46, 9 January 2021 (UTC)