Talk:Murder of Seth Rich/Archive 3

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RFC: Should the WikiLeaks reward be mentioned in the article?

The following discussion 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.

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Should this article mention the fact that WikiLeaks offered $20,000 in reward money for providing information regarding the perpetrator of this crime? ^Falling_Gravity 06:28, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

!Votes and comments

• Comment I have started this RfC because the previous discussion has mostly been going in circles. I'm mostly seeing the same group of editors disagreeing with each other (myself included). ^Falling_Gravity 06:35, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

  No.Comment We have an official announcement above from a Wikipedia administrator acting in his administrative capacity: "Specifically, it would appear quite clear that the subject's family has expressed distress at the involvement of Wikileaks in the murder investigation." Obviously, if that factual statement by the Wikipedia administrator is true, then we cannot and should not mention the WikiLeaks reward in this article, no matter how well-sourced it is. I believe the official announcement above from a Wikipedia administrator to be an incorrect oversimplification, given the following statement from the victim's father: "I hope the additional money helps find out who did this." However, it would appear that the official announcement above from a Wikipedia administrator takes precedence over what mere editors think, and I am in no mood to get topic-banned for defying that defective official announcement.Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:39, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

• no, we should not per BLP. As quoted above; see full comments here: Talk:Murder_of_Seth_Rich#Administrative_reminder_re:_BLP_policy And the family has said that they do not want their son's death dragged into this political conspiracy theorizing, as was already provided above, here. Jytdog (talk) 06:42, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Adding -- of course there are tons of very reliable sources for this information - there is no question the content is verifiable by reliable sources. And yes there are a lot of them, and some argue that therefore this even deserves considerable WEIGHT. However, we are in the silly season and we have to keep in mind WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENTISM and that the speculation driven by the Wikileaks reward is pretty much conspiracy theory at this point; this whole notion that a) he was the source of this DNC email dump to Wikileaks and b) the DNC/Clinton campaign offed him because of that. I weigh all that against the BLP/AVOIDVICTIM issues raised by MastCell above, and the family's stated wish to not have their son dragged into all that conspiracy theorizing (and neither the family nor the son were a public figure before this, noted by MastCell here) and I end up with "exclude". Obviously others weigh the various relevant policy issues differently; many do not weigh them at all. And finally, given that Assange/WikiLeaks had already acted to affect the US presidential elections by its initial publication of the emails, the fact that this organization offered the reward makes it pretty clear this is more pot-stirring aimed at the US election process This is where BLPVICTIM really kicks in - this stirring just further victimizes the family. We don't have to follow, and we shouldn't. Jytdog (talk) 19:22, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

• No per BLP It has already been made clear that this would be unacceptable - per MastCell [1] ---Steve Quinn (talk) 07:51, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

In other words, BLP policy covers the subject of this article. So according to BLP, all editors are specifically mandated to demonstrate empathy and circumspection when introducing content pertaining to living persons - or in this case, the recently dead, which "has implications for their living relatives and friends" (see WP:LIVE and WP:BDP). Questionable or contentious material, such as the irresponsible speculation involving WikiLeaks, the WikiLeaks reward, or which emanated from Julian Assange (in the press), has had a direct impact on his living relatives, as stated in the press, and should emphatically be avoided, again per WP:AVOIDVICTIM. The subject was a private citizen who became known by the media per a single event phenomenon, entirely as a direct result of being victim to someone else's actions, which was a gruesome crime per WP:AVOIDVICTIM. Adding material in this article pertaining to the WikiLeaks reward, Julian Assange's comments, and simply the amount of the award, is upholding and promoting Assange's agenda (per User:Jytdog in the above paragraph) and lending credence to his rumor mongering, speculation, and Assange's support of conspiracy theorizing as documented by the press (see WP:BLPGOSSIP, WP:PROFRINGE and WP:UNDUE). ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:54, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Also, below, there seems to be a misunderstanding about consensus in this instance. Per WP:CONLIMITED: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope."

Essentially what this is saying a local consensus among a limited group of editors, which is what we have here, at one place and time cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. This RFC is and was a local event. It will not be able to contravene policy - which has a Wikipeida wide consensus - in other words community consensus on a wider scale. This includes the given policy sub-sections. The only way that I can see to change a given policy is to directly conduct an RFC pertaining to that policy or an aspect of that policy. And if you look on the talk pages of those policy or guideline pages - you will see policy or guideline related discussions and some of these propose changes to certain aspects of policies or guidelines. Steve Quinn (talk) 01:11, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

• Yes per WP:CRYBLP. To quote D.Creish, several editors have asked in what way could simply mentioning "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction" violate BLP. No one has offered a succinct, rational explanation. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:44, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

MastCell did provide a succinct, rational explanation that also articulates the heart of the policy. You can disagree with it, but please don't represent that it wasn't provided. Jytdog (talk) 10:03, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

• Yes it is well sourced, received notable coverage, and was a unique factor about this murder. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:08, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
• Include The information is covered in a huge array of reliable sources and has been the subject of significant analysis in the press. We cannot censor it because it is a "conspiracy theory". Wikipedia has hundreds of articles about conspiracy theories and other fringe theories, many of them involving living people. The fact that it is relevant to the current US Presidential election has no bearing on this any more than it prevents us from publishing Hillary Clinton email controversy or the vague conspiracy theory alleging a connection Between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 14:39, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Coverage in reliable sources is a necessary not a sufficient condition for inclusion. Especially in a BLP. This is a conspiracy theory which has the potential of victimizing living people. And it's been included in a way which insinuates that it's true (as others pointed out, if we were to try and include the conspiracy theory which makes it explicit that it's a conspiracy theory, we would get off topic and it would violate WP:UNDUE).Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:17, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

The core purpose of BLP (which I firmly believe in) is to keep out unsourced or poorly sourced contentious information about living persons. Basically every major media outlet has given in-depth coverage to this event, and many have specifically made a point of mentioning the Wikileaks reward. While Wikipedia should not be the primary vehicle of gossip, the wide coverage in RS precludes the possibility of that. The BLP policy was never intended to be used to keep well-sourced information that has been given significant coverage by RS as one of the most significant facts about an incident out of an article on that incident. The fact that a reward was offered is not ambiguous and its significance in the context of this topic has been stressed by our sources. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 15:34, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

The Wordsmith; I framed my !vote above carefully. This is not about what we can do, it is about what we should do. The heart of BLP goes beyond "well-sourced or not" and calls for editors to be... well, sensitive. In this case, we have parents whose son's murder is being dragged into the muck of dirty politics in an election year, and the parents having said that this is terrible to them. So BLP says we should leave this out. We do this in WP all the time - for example we don't include every well-sourced factoid in WP; we consider if something is UNDUE. We use judgement all the time. This is like that. Do you at least see that line of reasoning and if so would you address it? Jytdog (talk) 17:24, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Yes, I understand your reasoning. I don't dispute your !vote, you have every right to a different interpretation of policies and community norms than I have. My interpretation is that the prominence of this fact in the RS presented give it due weight to be included here. I understand that we need to be sensitive to Seth Rich's family, which is why I don't suggest including allegations regarding the "DNC leak source"/"assassination" theory that many sources are running with. Including the simple fact that the reward offer was made, without giving credence to the conspiracy theory, is in my opinion the best way to reflect the weighting that sources have given while balancing with the letter and spirit of policy. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:43, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikileaks announced the reward for the sole purpose of stoking the so-called "theory" to pursue its acknowledged vendetta against Sec'y Clinton. This has nothing to do with the crime any more than the statement that it's raining in Washington has to do with the pandas in the National Zoo. SPECIFICO talk 18:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

While that panda is adorable (though it seems to be taking a nap at the moment), that doesn't change the fact your assertion is original research/synthesis. If dozens of articles about the National Zoo pandas all gave prominence to the weather, then it would be a violation of NPOV to deliberately omit it. WP:WEIGHT specifically says "Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public." Even if we don't like the fact that a reward was issued, or we think there's an agenda here, the fact of its coverage in reliable, third-party sources means we should mention the existence of the reward in the article. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 19:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Ordinarily that is how things work here, but WP:BLP specifically states that when it comes to non-public figures, there are other considerations besides just sourcing. Reliably sourced coverage is necessary, but not sufficient, in this particular setting—all the more so when the subject is notable solely for being a crime victim. It's odd to have to keep saying this, because it's a fundamental part of a fundamental policy, but it really doesn't seem to be sinking in. That's not to say that we should or should not include the material, but any serious discussion needs to take into account WP:BLP and WP:AVOIDVICTIM, and not just devolve into repeating "but it's sourced!" MastCell ^Talk 04:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, The Wordsmith. I hear you. Jytdog (talk) 18:52, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

From a policy perspective, there seems to be a misunderstanding in the initial comment from this thread. It's inappropriate to apply the same standards here as we would with Hillary Clinton's or Vladimir Putin's biography. WP:BLP contains explicit protections for private/non-public figures, especially those whose notability stems entirely from being the victim of a crime. Clinton and Putin are public figures; Rich was not. That distinction is essential to applying WP:BLP here. MastCell ^Talk 19:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying the private vs public aspect. Jytdog (talk) 10:18, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• Exclude obvious BLP vio per MastCell [2].Volunteer Marek (talk) 15:17, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

It is simply not a BLP violation to write that Wikileaks offered a reward for information about his murder. It would be a violation (and conspiracy theory) to link this reward to any implication of the source of the Wikileaks. Mr Ernie (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

And could you explain why else an unrelated fugitive in a foreign land would offer such a reward on this, of all the thousands of crimes committed on earth in recent days? Rhetorical. SPECIFICO talk 16:34, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I won't speculate about anything. I'll just stick to what's reliably sourced and notable. Mr Ernie (talk) 16:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Rhetorical...I didn't ask for your comment. I was demonstrating that your statement is absurd. BTW "notable" is not the test as to what we include within an article. The applicable policies and guidelines have been discussed at length on this page. I suggest you review them. SPECIFICO talk

You have failed to demonstrate that Mr Ernie's statement is absurd. Instead you have elevated your completely unsourced personal opinions ("Wikileaks announced the reward for the sole purpose of stoking the so-called 'theory' to pursue its acknowledged vendetta against Sec'y Clinton.") above what is contained in multiple reliable sources. One might even you doing that "absurd"... --Guy Macon (talk) 23:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: [3]. Geogene (talk) 00:33, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

More about Assange's agenda: [4], [5], "A scan of its Twitter feed shows a preoccupation with Clinton and the Democrats, with nary a word concerning Trump or the GOP. Founder Julian Assange, who remains housed in the Ecudorean embassy in London, recently told HBO's Bill Maher that he's "super happy" over the fallout from the DNC leaks, which are searchable on the Wikileaks website, and has recently been insinuating that Democratic officials could have been involved in the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich. [6]. Understand, if you mention the reward, all of this will be necessary for context. That's unfortunate that you're insisting on it, per WP:COATRACK. Geogene (talk) 00:44, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Re: "if you mention the reward, all of this will be necessary for context", [ Citation Needed ]. Not a single editor has advocated putting in the material that you claim "will be necessary". Could you please respond to what some of us actually want to put in the page instead of responding some made-up thing that you imagine to be at the bottom of a slippery slope? --Guy Macon (talk)

No, you missed it. If the RfC is for include, I will be adding that stuff to the article myself, per WP:N. After all, I have enough reliable sources, apparently, per the RfC. Geogene (talk) 22:07, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

If you decide to violate WP:POINT by adding speculation as to why Wikileaks offered the reward (The RfC was about mentioning the reward, not speculation about why it was offered) be prepared to face the consequences for disruptive editing. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:28, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• No. RS makes clear that this "offer" is unrelated to the event which is the subject of the article and is entirely a ploy by Wikileaks to smear the Democratic candidate and Democratic Party pursuant to Assange's vendetta reported by RS. Wikileaks' insinuation about Mr. Rich is tantamount to a libelous assertion that Mr. Rich betrayed his employer. Also, please stop citing a single cherry-picked spontaneous comment that Mr. Rich's father gave under duress (and in a larger context) shortly after the event. The family's later definitive statement through its spokesman is amply reported in RS. SPECIFICO talk 16:47, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
• No. Besides being against BLP (as clearly stated above), it's not notable. Anyone can offer anything as a reward for publicity reasons; it confers no meaning by itself. Even if we stated this, the reader would respond with "so what?". Maybe it implies some meaning or significance, but we cannot go about hinting at things per SYNTH and UNDUE. It's just meaningless (and against BLP policy, essentially for that reason). We cannot do this. --A D Monroe III (talk) 19:05, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
• No. The problems have been well documented, the only inclusion rationale I'm seeing is that reliable sources mention it. Which is not a suitable rationale, because it's not the policy to slavishly repeat every factoid available in newspapers. It's not even accurate to call it a "viewpoint", it's only a snippet of information with no logical connection to the subject. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of facts; content must be educational or at least encyclopedic. There needs to a reason to include this. Because of all the BLP issues, that reason should be compelling. It has to add enough value to outweigh victimization and the inevitable profringe insinuations associated with it. I see no value in it at all. Geogene (talk) 20:59, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
• Strong include per Mr Ernie and The Wordsmith. Even conspiracy theories can be notable enough to include on Wikipedia. The WikiLeaks thing has received notable coverage in reliable sources, in connection to the Seth Rich murder. It seems that there is an almost ideological opposition to including this fact here from some editors. We should clearly include it for obvious reasons. --1990'sguy (talk) 22:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

If those reasons are "obvious", why is it so hard to produce them? Geogene (talk) 00:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Who said it was hard to do so? The WikiLeaks offer was covered in major, reliable sources in connection to the murder, and yet, some editors still want to keep this info out. Just because this topic wades into the realm of conspiracy theories doesn't mean we have to keep it out. If major, reliable sources cover this info in connection to the murder, and if editors still want to keep this info out, I think it's either a great misunderstanding or censorship. --1990'sguy (talk) 02:50, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

That argument isn't going anywhere. There is no policy-based reason to slavishly repeat everything in newspapers. This is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper, not a tabloid. Repeating that misunderstanding of policy will not make it true. And I'd like you to refrain from speculating about other editors' ideology or motivation. Geogene (talk) 03:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

It's not repeating everything in newspapers. We decided not to delete this article, and if we are going to keep this article, there is no reason not to keep the WikiLeaks offer, as it was reported by major reliable sources in direct connection to the incident. There is nothing "newsy" or tabloid-ish in informing readers that the WikiLeaks reward was made (didn't it receive significant coverage?). I don't think you can keep the article and not the reward offer. Both have to be included. There is nothing wrong with covering a conspiracy theory if it is covered in reliable sources. And for what it's worth, there are plenty of conspiracy theory articles on Wikipedia. Also, when I referred to the ideology of editors, this was based off of comments from editors that basically said, at least to me, that they opposed keeping this article (or the offer) because it was a conspiracy theory. At the least, it doesn't seem like very good reasoning to me, but yes, I'll try to AGF better in the future. --1990'sguy (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

No. The AfD result was No Consensus, not Keep. And, if we're going to write about conspiracy theories, we're going to write about them from a mainstream perspective. Which means that when I'm doing making this neutral, some that voted Keep might wish that this had been deleted. Geogene (talk) 22:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

When I said "We decided not to delete this article" I meant "No Consensus". Also, because major, reliable sources cover the WikiLeaks offer, wouldn't citing those sources give a "mainstream perspective" to this event by default? It's not like we're citing blogs or anything like that. --1990'sguy (talk) 22:10, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

There were some RS that mentioned it a manner that was very negative towards Wikileaks. Newsweek and Time both come to mind there. That should be in the article as well, if there are RS, per the RfC. You can't argue that we *must* mention this because "reliable sources exist" and then turn around and say that we *can't* mention something else, if reliable sources also exist for that. And we can't just mention the reward exists without mentioning it in its complete context. I still wish we were above this kind of thing, but the way things are going it seems not. Geogene (talk) 22:14, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I just don't see how you can include information about the murder and not include information about the WikiLeaks information. --1990'sguy (talk) 22:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include Why censor the reliable information established by reliable sources? (PeacePeace (talk) 23:57, 24 August 2016 (UTC))

Just cuz yer mistakened doesn't mean yer censored. SPECIFICO talk 01:55, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

It is true that reliable sources have covered this in connection to the Murder. --1990'sguy (talk) 02:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

"In connection to" is not the standard WP policy prescribes for editorial content decisions. This is fundamental. SPECIFICO talk 03:06, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include With the amount of reliable sources covering the reward, it is at the very least worth mentioning in the article. If this were simply the BLP for Seth Rich and not "Murder of Seth Rich" I might feel differently. Cheers Comatmebro User talk:Comatmebro 00:34, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

From the perspective of BLP policy there's no difference between an article on Seth Rich and "Murder of Seth Rich". BLP applies to recently deceased, especially those who died in circumstances like these.Volunteer Marek (talk) 01:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• It's complicated WP:AVOIDVICTIM says, "Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization." This claim may contribute to prolonging victimization. However, BLP is ultimately just an elaboration of WP:V, and emotional sensitivity is not a carte blanche to ignore WP:NPOV. The marginal prolongation of victimization from a WP article is minimal compared to the prominent media attention making the reward WP:DUE. I suggest as a compromise that the offer be noted at Wikileaks, but not pages that are primarily about the victim, as long as his decease is considered "recent". Rhoark (talk) 03:01, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

But that is not a compromise. This behavior of Assange's may well be appropriate for his/Wikileaks articles but it has nothing to do with the crime that's the subject on this page. SPECIFICO talk 03:06, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

So now you have worked yourself around to claiming that someone offering a $25,000 reward for the perpetrator of the crime that's the subject of this page has nothing to do with the crime that's the subject of this page? Do you have any idea how silly that sounds? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:49, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• No per MastCell, Specifico and others. Family is clearly distressed by coverage; Aug 20 Newsweek article on an interview with parents’ spokesman:

The slain man’s parents, Mary and Joel Rich of Omaha, Nebraska, were distressed by the apparent political exploitation of their son’s death by Clinton’s opponents. Seth Rich had just accepted a promotion from the DNC to a position in her campaign, they said, and he was devoted to getting her elected.

“It’s unfortunate and hurtful,” Rich’s parents said, in a statement to Newsweek through family spokesman Brad Bauman, “that at the moment a murderer remains at large, there remains unfounded press speculation about the activities of our son that night. We should be focusing on the perpetrator at large.” Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 03:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

In what way, exactly, is simply mentioning the reward "unfounded press speculation about the activities of their son that night"? Please explain in detail how you get from one to the other. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:49, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Since you want to add material to the article, you need to convince me that it is relevant to the topic and that its inclusion would not violate Wikipedia policies. (Reminder: I'm one of the users who want to get rid of the article altogether. Since it doesn't look like that's going to happen, this is just damage control on my part.) My question for you: What is the relevance of any action by an uninvolved third party without any prior involvement in the event itself or with the people involved in the event? The sentence (WL offers reward) seems innocuous enough, but most people reading it will ask themselves why this particular homicide and not any of the others in DC/the US/all over the world, and then they'll look at the references. (This has been brought up by other editors in this Talk, but I don't have the time right now to look it up.) I haven't seen a single reliable source where you're not confronted immediately with Wikileaks/Assange's insinuations and sly hints. It smacks of character assassination, even though it probably was just their usual disregard for the consequences of their publications and announcements. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• No I also agree with MastCell (see here). According to the cited policy, which I agree is relevant to this mattter, if there are doubts (even though some editors think it is ok, many other editors do not) it should not be included. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 09:31, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
• Include per WP:NPOV, and per MastCell. Content adheres to WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:BLP policies. Omitting the content – which is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic – would be WP:UNDUE. Subject's father has wished that the reward would help to find the murderer, so it's not clear how including the reward would cause distress. Moreover, I would argue that WP:AVOIDVICTIM should not be applied at all. It seems that WP:AVOIDVICTIM only applies to living individuals ([7]). Secondly WP:AVOIDVICTIM is closely related to WP:BLP1E which is applied only to biographies of living people and to biographies of low-profile individuals. Politrukki (talk) 11:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC); edited 10:11, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

User:Politrukki - you just changed your !vote to add "and per MastCell" but what you write here, doesn't heed MastCell at all. When a victim says "X distresses me", writing "I don't see why X would cause distress" is exactly ignoring BLP. This is what MastCell was calling us to grapple with - what they actually are going through. I'm not looking to change your !vote but I am looking for you to actually deal with the BLP Issue, as will the closers. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 10:16, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Since MastCell has clarified that they didn't opine whether material should be included or not, I just wanted to use this opportunity to endorse upholding BLP. Part of that is not deleting content which is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic. See my comment below. Politrukki (talk) 10:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include it is well referenced, and in fact comes directly from julian assange. Iazyges (talk) 12:22, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

So, Iazyges, if Assange announces that he is betting on the Red Sox to win it all this year, should we add that to the Baseball article? PS, do we know whether Wikileaks has $25,000 to its name? SPECIFICO talk 13:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Specifico this is not a forum to badger other opinions. You're making quite the leap with your comments regarding what User:Iazyges said. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:54, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

If the Sports section of every major newspaper wrote articles about Assange's bet, then yes. We need to accurately reflect the weighting our RS give to various aspects of the story. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 14:06, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, now do you think that the RS description of the crime has reached that level of prominence? Not coverage of Assange's behavior, but of the crime that is the topic here. The analogous article topic would be "baseball", not the 2016 season. SPECIFICO talk 16:24, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• Specifico, you do ask questions. How dare you question the integrity of St. Julian? And the answer to your question is: You do not need money for bogus reward offers. See section "Wikileaks reward offer is bogus", below. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:38, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• That is not helping. Geogene (talk) 20:26, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include. Imminently citable completely non-contentious fact that received sufficient, indeed significant, coverage. I think it would be remiss not to mention it. Just don't emphasize it in any way -- make it as brief and neutral as possible; a tiny brief passing aside in a paragraph (and not at all in the lede). The gist of MastCell's post seemed to be the family doesn't want it mentioned, but that's not what Wikipedia yields to. We base decisions on the reader, and on what is encyclopedic. We also base content to reflect the weight that reliable sources give each element. Softlavender (talk) 15:08, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

  Two Questions to Provoke Thought: 1) Does anyone besides me opine that this BLP business has nothing to do with including a sentence on the reward offered? 2) And does anyone besides myself think that (for those who think BLP might be relevant) the following statement might have some significance?

"The family welcomes any and all information that could lead to the identification of the individuals responsible, and certainly welcomes contributions that could lead to new avenues of investigation, . . . " -- Brad Bauman, an alleged spokesman for the family, said to the International Business Times. (PeacePeace (talk) 17:00, 25 August 2016 (UTC))

• Include, conditional on highly reliable sources covering the award. I can't find any given in this discussion, but I read people above saying that they exist. If they don't exist, don't include. If they do, do. --GRuban (talk) 18:29, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
• Include: The two strongest arguments for exclusion are:

1. WP:AVOIDVICTIM - which requires we demonstrate inclusion of the reward's existence would promote victimization; that hasn't been demonstrated despite repeated requests.
2. WP:FRINGE - which requires we show the existence of the reward is itself a conspiracy theory (rather than, as others have suggested might, combined with additional unincluded information, potentially lead a subset of readers to assume a conspiracy); this also has not been done.

In conclusion: I find the strongest arguments for exclusion unsubstantiated. D.Creish (talk) 21:11, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include. WP:BLP weakens somewhat when we are talking about dead people. And we're not dragging him through the mud, here. If there was an allegation that he was killed because in a drug deal gone bad or something, that might be different. But its not like that. Some people are claiming that he is a heroic political martyr. An extremely famous and notable person (Julian Assange) thinks it was maybe a political hit. And a lot of other people are agree. And if it is, the implications are far-reaching in a couple of ways, and even if its not the fact that people believe it matters. And it's a non-trivial element in the campaign for President of the United States, a large and important country. And that is why the article exists. SOrry, but this person is a political figure now. Anyway it's silly to have an article but not to include what the article is really about -- "This event was notable, but you have to guess why!". Herostratus (talk) 14:07, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• Nah, we’re not dragging anyone through the mud, the "extremely famous and notable" person merely opened the coffin and spit on the body. Geogene already posted this quote somewhere in this Talk, but since you obviously haven’t read it, I’m repeating it here for your convenience. Please read it! "That said, some are attempting to politicize this horrible tragedy, and in their attempts to do so are actually causing more harm than good and impeding on the ability for law enforcement to properly do their job,” Bauman (editor's note: family spokesman) said. “For the sake of finding Seth’s killer, and for the sake of giving the family the space they need at this terrible time, they are asking for the public to refrain from pushing unproven and harmful theories about Seth’s murder."Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 19:31, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include. I'm no fan of Wikileaks, but I don't see why this comment shouldn't be included. I read MastCell's warning about victimizing the victim further, causing distress to his loved ones, but I don't think he makes a compelling argument that mentioning on this project that the reward was offered would do so. It's a statement of uncontroversial fact that Wikileaks did so, it does not cast the victim in any kind of negative light or violate his privacy, nor cast any suspects in a positive light, and repeating that the reward is out there does not itself politicize the murder. The victim's family obviously already knows the offer exists so seeing it here again wouldn't do anything, and the victim's father has made statements about hoping the money is helpful, which doesn't sound very distressed about it. Mmyers1976 (talk) 15:54, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

  Comment (I already voted "no"). Several editors voted "include" and used part of a statement the Rich family’s spokesman Brad Bauman gave to Business Insider to justify why in their opinion WP:BLP and WP:BDP do not apply in this case. They left out the - in my opinion - more important second part. Specifico quoted this at 17:25, 20 August 2016, in the long "Deletion of rewards" thread, but it seems to have been overlooked by many editors.

"The family welcomes any and all information that could lead to the identification of the individuals responsible, and certainly welcomes contributions that could lead to new avenues of investigation," Bauman said.

He added:

"That said, some are attempting to politicize this horrible tragedy, and in their attempts to do so, are actually causing more harm than good and impeding on the ability for law enforcement to properly do their job. For the sake of finding Seth's killer, and for the sake of giving the family the space they need at this terrible time, they are asking for the public to refrain from pushing unproven and harmful theories about Seth's murder."

Any question of notability has to take a backseat to considerations of WP:BLP. Of course Wikileaks' reward tweet was amply covered in reliable sources, but never without mention of the sh.tstorm of speculations, insinuations, and allegations it started and which was kept alive and stoked by Assange's numerous interviews followed more reports on the speculations, insinuations, and allegations presented in the interviews.

Also, there is the question of whether the reward offer was genuine. I don’t know whether there is a separate institution in DC that handles donations by private citizens, organizations, or businesses to increase police reward offers or whether that is handled through the police department, but there hasn’t been any press release or any mention in the press that the offer was ever officialized (if that’s the correct term for the process) in the 18 days since the tweet. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 07:37, 27 August 2016 (UTC) Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 07:49, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

• Include. User:MastCell has substantially elaborated upon his initial comment, and accordingly I feel comfortable now supporting inclusion. I don't think a brief mention of the WikiLeaks reward poses any significant risk of re-victimizing the victim or causing the survivors distress. The victim's father stated: "I hope the additional money helps find out who did this." The material is also well-sourced, and I don't think saying so should in any way discount my !vote by a closing admin conversant with policy. Likewise, if I ended my comment at the end of the last sentence, without explicitly mentioning WP:BLP, I don't think that would discount my !vote either, since I have addressed factors that are mentioned by WP:BLP. MastCell also impugns my motives and urges that my opinion should perhaps not be taken seriously because it's me giving the opinion, but I would urge the closing admin to consider the propriety of such an ad hominem, and of course I deny basing my comments here upon anything but the pertinent policies applied to the facts at hand. Moreover, regarding the "no per MastCell" !votes, interpretation of those !votes is difficult since MastCell denies having a negative opinion about inclusion, and so I'd think that some more persuasive rationale would be needed to give those !votes much influence here, especially if those !votes do not mention WP:BLP or address any of the BLP factors.Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:20, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
• Include. Established news publications feel it's appropriate to include the WikiLeaks reward money in their headlines, so I don't see how it would be a problem to briefly mention WikiLeaks without mentioning the conspiracy hysteria that arose because of it. Additionally, Assange states that the reward money helped WikiLeaks collect information regarding the murder which it then forwarded to the police. All of this is applicable to an article titled "Murder of Seth Rich" because it documents the murder investigation and police efforts. ^Falling_Gravity 00:09, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

That is a primary sourced "fact" from a self-interested self-promoter and avowed Clinton-hater. Clearly fails verification and not an independent RS for the assertion Assange makes. SPECIFICO talk 01:08, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

That's why I think it should be included not as a fact but as a quotation. Whenever we quote someone, we're pretty much letting the reader decide if it's true. It doesn't have to be included if we mention the WikiLeaks reward, but I thought I would bring it up here in case people missed my previous comments in a section further down. ^Falling_Gravity 01:46, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I think that essay you linked is directly contrary to WP policy. Anyway the quote doesn't even assert anything that could be demonstrated or falsified. It's surprisingly vacuous, which I suppose is why journalists have been so tough on Assange. SPECIFICO talk 02:03, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

You may not like Assange or Fox 5 DC, but that doesn't mean it's against policy. Also, the quote is verifiable since you can ask the police if they received Assange's information about the murder. ^Falling_Gravity 02:30, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I have no opinion concerning Mr. Assange. I'm really disappointed you would lob an ad hominem like that. To return to the crux: WP editors do not go sleuthing about the Police station doing Original Research to fact check, so I suggest you read WP:V again. Your view is mistaken and that Assange interview can't be used here. The Assange statement is a primary source and he is not a notable criminologist, or investigator. SPECIFICO talk 02:45, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I thought your opinion was that Assange was a "self-interested self-promoter and avowed Clinton-hater". ^Falling_Gravity 02:53, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Please. Those are facts. I have no opinion concerning him. I know little about him and I care nothing about him. Please review the policy links that many editors have cited in this bloated RfC thread. SPECIFICO talk 02:57, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

If those are "facts", then I challenge you to add them (especially the first two) to Assange's article. Anyways, I was challenging your claim that the quote was vacuous. WP:V states that quotes should have inline citations, not that we know 100% that the quoted statements are true. ^Falling_Gravity 03:12, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

If you get a chance, please review the policies on sourcing. WP is not an indiscriminate collection of facts. There are plenty of RS, for your information, that discuss Assange's vendetta against Sec'y Clinton. WP does not generally repeat primary-sourced statements except in the event that they are the words of a notable expert in the field, and then only in certain cases. Your !vote means little without policy to back it up, but as noted, we should not use the talk page to broadcast Assange's claims. SPECIFICO talk 04:06, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Can we please limit this RfC to the reward money? Most of this argument is about something I consider tangential to the RfC. I've already mentioned why I mentioned it. The "Quoting Assange" section below is a more appropriate venue to discuss this. It might be worth moving this thread down there. ^Falling_Gravity 05:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

User:FallingGravity - just to be clear, established news publications don't have a BLP policy. Wikipedia does. As has been discussed extensively, !votes that don't grapple with our BLP policy (and you don't even mention it) are likely to be given little weight by a closer. You can of course !vote as you wish. Jytdog (talk) 02:37, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

So you're saying my vote gets less weight than yours because you cried BLP and I didn't? I don't think BLP is an issue here because it's just adding facts to the article like the police reward that's already there. ^Falling_Gravity 02:50, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

No, that is not what I am saying. I am re-stating what I said at more length here. I won't respond further as I have no interest in changing your !vote in any way; I did think you might want to manage the risk your !vote will not be considered. Expressing disdain for clueful applications of policy creates significant risk for you. As you will. Jytdog (talk) 03:03, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

• @FallingGravity: The interview you are referring to was only mentioned in an article on another (local) Fox channel, i.e, they're reporting on themselves; aside from the usual foaming-at-the-mouth conspiracy sites it wasn't mentioned by any other sources, not even the ones usually not considered reliable by Wikipedia. Anyway, you are misquoting the quote you want to add on top of whether the WL reward offer should be mentioned in the article or not. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 08:35, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

• Comment Maybe it's proper place would be in the Wikileaks or Assange articles? It would read better. Irondome (talk) 03:00, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
• Include. As the article stands, it's about someone who was murdered in Washington, D.C.. Poor guy. But sadly, such incidents are not unusual. So why does the article exist? Reading the references answers that question: this murder is notable because of the involvement of Assange and Wikileaks. At present, the article reads like "Hamlet without the prince". It should either be deleted, or should state the reason for its notability. Maproom (talk) 08:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
• Include It's funny how far some Wikipedia editors will go to remove something they don't like. The sources used for the sentence "The Metropolitan Police Department posted its customary reward of $25,000 for information about the death." are news articles titled "WikiLeaks offers $20,000 reward for help finding Omaha native Seth Rich's killer" and "WikiLeaks offers reward for help finding DNC staffer’s killer" by the Omaha World-Herald and the Washington Post.[8] The media coverage on the whole Julian Assange/WikiLeaks - DNC murder connection is enough to fill over 9,000 hacked emails. ZN3ukct (talk) 06:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Geogene (talk) 21:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks ZN3ukct (talk) 03:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, you are free to find other sources and replace these. I know this would be acceptable to me. By the way, how is the water? Steve Quinn (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Here's one [jpupdates.com/2016/07/12/police-offer-25000-reward-for-information-leading-to-arrest-of-killer-of-dnc-jewish-employee-seth-rich/] but that was before the Wikileaks thing. And the water still feels warm to me. ZN3ukct (talk) 04:20, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

• SNOW Include (summoned by bot). Honestly this comes down to a pretty straightforward and obvious application of WP:WEIGHT and WP:NOTCENSORED principles:

• 1) I don't mean to be dismissive of the grief of this young man's poor family, but we do not alter our content based on the wishes of the family of our biographical subjects, deceased or living.
• 2) Whatever the motivation of the operators of Wikileaks in offering this reward, they did it--that's simple fact covered by a great number of WP:reliable sources. The fact that their actions may have been predicated in belief in a conspiracy theory does not mean that we are espousing a conspiracy theory by providing coverage of their offer. Not meaning to put anyone on the defensive here either, but that's a "quality-by-association" non-sequitor so obvious that I'm genuinely gobsmacked by the poor degree of analogical reasoning that jumps to the conclusion that "discussing the existence of a conspiracy theory/actions of third parties inspired by that theory" = "engaging in conspiracy theory".
• 3) There's also a quasi-Streisand effect here; this story is out there (it may in fact be the biggest media aspect of the tragic event that is the subject of this article). People come to this encyclopedia expecting to find context and further information about salient aspects of this story; we're not doing anyone any favours by trying to sanitize a story of distasteful or awkward realities. The only possible outcomes of that approach are the following, for any given reader: A) we successfully obfuscate a major part of the coverage our reliable sources discuss with regard to this event (rather than faithfully represent those sources, whatever we feel about the claims, as WP:Neutrality demands of us), B) the reader who is already familiar with this aspect of the topic becomes confused by the nature of our coverage, or C) an informed reader recognizes exactly what is going on here (we are ignoring an aspect of the story because it has uncomfortable aspects) and loses some faith in the encyclopedia's liklihood of presenting a complete, dispassionate and neutral review of a topic, whenever some of our editors judge some party's actions to be too stupid/bizarre/unreasoned to be worth mentioning.

And they (our saavy reader) would be right to be concerned; that kind of approach risks removing a whole lot of deeply important information from a worrying breadth of articles--not least those articles concerning acts pf violent extremism where one or more parties believes something most of us would judge as nutty. Anders Breivik espoused all kinds of nonsense that went into his decision to become a child mass-murderer that is a combination of chilling insanity and shocking stupidity, but being aware of it is critical to the process of understanding him and those with similarly pathological minds. Now, obviously in this case we are talking about an action after the fact of the violence by a third party, but the same principle holds: whether weird, stupid, or batshit crazy, we don't really get to present a story the way we would like it to go. Rather, we defer to the weight of the facts in the sources; our sole job here as authors of encyclopedic content is to faithfully represent our sources on the topic at hand.

• 4) Lastly, as policy/procedural matter, WP:BLP does not even apply here to begin with, for two obvious reasons. A) we're not talking about a purported action or quality of a living or recently deceased person; we're talking about the event of a person's death, and the actions of a third party in the aftermath of that death. BLP is meant to guard against claims about a person-as-article-subject which might prejudicially impugn their character or otherwise misrepresent them. It creates a high standard of sourcing for contentious claims about the conduct and characteristics of living or recently deceased person, but it is not at all a relevant policy for discussing events that they are factually related to but in which they played no role and which do not directly reflect upon them at all. B) Even then, BLP does not demand that we ignore content under any circumstances; it only establishes that contentious claims (that is, claims with legitimacy that is called into question not claims which simply generate controversy by virtue of their implications). In this instance it is not a controversial claim that Wikileaks offered this reward--that's an established fact that the editors on both sides here agree on. Now, Wikileaks behaviour in connection with this reward offer might have generated controversy outside of our editorial discussion here, but that's an entirely separate matter entirely from our editorial determinations here (and honestly, the existence of that controversy is all the more reason to discuss the subject here, as well as additional evidence for why it is not controversial to say that Wikileaks took this peculiar action).

Sorry to put it so bluntly, but let it WP:SNOW, let it WP:SNOW, let it WP:SNOW on the notion that this is somehow inappropriate information to include in this article; those arguments hold no water under our current policies, BLP or otherwise--said arguments in fact run contrary to multiple of our pillar policies. Snow ^{let's rap} 08:17, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Snow Rise, in #1 you wrote: "...but we do not alter our content based on the wishes of the family of our biographical subjects, deceased or living". In #2 you wrote "Whatever the motivation of the operators of Wikileaks in offering this reward, they did it--that's simple fact covered by a great number of WP:reliable sources".

Those statements are actually incorrect:

Per WP:BDP BLP pertains to people who have recently died, particularly to contentious or questionable material about the dead that has implications for their living relatives and friends. Furthermore, when writing about a person noteworthy only for one or two events, including every detail can lead to problems – even when the material is well sourced. WP:AVOIDVICTIM. This indicates that we do alter our content based on the wishes of the family of the deceased even if it is well sourced.

"This is of particular importance when dealing with...individuals whose notability stems largely or entirely from being victims of another's actions".

"Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization"". WP:AVOIDVICTIM.

And, this means your #4 statement is factually incorrect when you assert "WP:BLP does not even apply here to begin with..." Sorry to say but BLP applies to begin with and end with in the particular case of this article, as I have just shown and as per my Ivote.

I also notice (#4) you point out the WikiLieaks reward is an established fact, which it is, then you say "Now, Wikileaks behavior in connection with this reward offer might have generated controversy outside of our editorial discussion here, but that's an entirely separate matter entirely from our editorial determinations here." Actually, it is incorrect to say that. It is exactly the controversy generated (and the trumpeting of Seth's death) which has created an impact on living relatives, along with their being an amplification of a private citizen crime victim, that is the heart of the issue. If there were no crime victim receiving attention only for one event, and, hence, no tormented relatives, it would be acceptable to add the WikiLeaks reward into the article. Steve Quinn (talk) 23:04, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

@Steve Quinn:: Hi Steve--unfortunately, I lack the time to appropriately respond to your arguments here, but my thoughts on the policy language and issues you raise are addressed in the last few paragraphs of my (rather long-winded) response to Jytdog in the "Material Restored" section bellow. I will attempt to respond more directly this coming week (if the discussion is not closed before then), but this is looking to be a killer week for me. In any event, I think my thoughts on the matter are pretty well encapsulated between that post and the one immediately above. Regards! Snow ^{let's rap} 00:54, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

• strong Include without excess focus. This factlet has received wide media focus and is not capable of violating WP:AVOIDVICTIM, it's not negative to any oof the parties involved. Their disagreeing with Wikileaks involvement doesn't preclude mentioning it in the article and the fact that they don't want wikileaks involvement itself probably warrants mention in the article. SPACKlick (talk) 04:22, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Material restored

• 2600:8800:2180:1ED:9808:69DE:6C6A:D219 has already added the sentence in question with the comment Restoring unduly deleted comment. So much for the RfC process. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 07:48, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• If you are thinking of doing something about it, please read Talk:Murder of Seth Rich#Page protection again. The right way to address user misbehavior is to report it at WP:ANI. The wrong was is to edit war. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:22, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• I have notified the BLP noticeboard [9] - I'm thinking this is the best option Steve Quinn (talk) 15:05, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• Because I doubt the Admins are going to do it, at this point - I removed the material per BLP policy - per notification Talk:Murder of Seth Rich#Administrative_reminder_re:_BLP_policy - and in reference to WP:AVOIDVICTIM. My thinking is the IP did this in the first place to either get around discretionary sanctions, or start an edit war. Steve Quinn (talk) 17:31, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• Please don't quote ("per notification...") what Mastcell wrote as justification for removal, and especially not for edit warring to keep the material out. Mastcell was crystal clear: "I don't have an opinion on whether the material belongs in the article or not—that is a matter to be resolved by discussion." Final warning: self-revert now or you will be reported at ANI for purposely edit warring after being warned not to. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:19, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• Take it to ANI if you want. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks for the second-guessing and the admonishment/accusation. Strictly on-topic, 'though, so no harm no foul. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 07:43, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

So I have learned that anything goes if you can find a policy to piggy back, regardless if it applies or not. "Removing X per WP:Y." Steve Quinn please state specifically and concisely how stating Wikileaks offered a reward is a BLP violation. Mr Ernie (talk) 01:45, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

( ...Sound of crickets... ) --Guy Macon (talk) 09:04, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Let's not get dramatic. I count twenty-two !votes to include (if we include three that suggest the topic is appropriate to report but that the content may need to be reworked or relocated), vs. eight opposing the inclusion. Arguably more important than that is the fact that the includes have addressed the actual reading, purpose and function of WP:BLP, whereas most of the opposes have not provided a detailed and clear argument about how or why BLP's general use (providing an extra layer of scrutiny of sources for any controversial facts about a person) should be stretched to somehow cover this topic (which has nothing to do about the characteristics or actions of a person, but rather an event that occurred after their death, pertaining to people they did not know and which can have no significant influence on how their character is perceived). Further, even if BLP did apply here, it's not a magic talisman that keeps salacious (or weird, or dumbfounding) behaviour out of an article. It just means that more robust sourcing is required, and the feature of the story being debated here is discussed pretty much universally in all sources on the topic; that detail has also been raised repeatedly in the consensus discussion above, and not challenged by any oppose !vote.

In short, this isn't the most run-away RfC discussion I've ever seen, but there is a clear, unambiguous consensus amongst the respondents, without a doubt. That WP:LOCALCONSENSUS result must be respected, and the outcome will be immediately obvious to any reviewing admin or other neutral reviewing party, not withstanding the fact that the eight !oppose votes are clustered towards the top of the discussion. So there are really two options here. We can A) close the discussion as a clear (though not unanimous) consensus, or B) allow the RfC to run for a month to solicit a few additional opinions. The latter is not strictly speaking necessary here--given the way the !votes currently stack, there is essentially zero chance that the trickle of respondents that may further comment will substantially change the general consensus--but allowing discussion to proceed to at least two or three weeks would demonstrate a willingness to invite as many perspectives as possible. Whichever approach is utilized, we should have a formal close (ideally by a previously uninvolved party, regardless of the landslide here) and the consensus version should be restored. At that point, anyone reverting should be promptly taking to WP:ANEW or WP:ANI. So no, "anything" does not go, there are forums in place to handle a refusal to accept consensus and we should avoid letting discussion devolve to histrionics and hand waving in such cases. Snow ^{let's rap} 20:47, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I'll be interested to see what an experienced admin does at the closing. Many of the !votes don't grapple with BLP and will probably be discounted. Decisions in WP are not made by raw tally but by reviewing policy-based arguments. But we'll see. Jytdog (talk) 11:59, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Of course discussions are not resolved by a simple tally, but they are resolved by WP:consensus and the consensus here as to what is demanded by WP:BLP (and other, pillar policies) really could not possibly be clearer. You've just vaguely dismissed the approach you are opposed to by saying that some of the arguments furthered (from an overwhelming majority of a large number randomly responding community members) are wrongheaded or incomplete, but I daresay a fair many of them would say (and indeed have said) the same about your preferred approach. That's exactly why we have the consensus process. So making making that kind of broad classification of the opposition really doesn't get us anywhere--this is why we have the consensus process to begin with.

Look, we all appreciate that !votes don't necessarily carry the day in a strict tallying/"everyone's vote is equal" kind of way. But when you have a discussion in which nearing 40 editors (many of them quite experienced in policy) have participated, most of those editors have responded via random bot notices, and the result is a landslide consensus, there comes a point at which you really should consider accepting that there is a strong likelihood that this consensus reflects the broader views of the community on the issue in question, and that yours is the minority view, and one not likely to be supported by the community or any broadly-based discussion on the matter at the present time. Now, there have been a few occasions over the years where an admin has decided that their position entitles them to disregard a clear consensus and take an action accordingly, but A) I've never seen it do anything but prolong the issue, wasting additional editor hours with the same ultimate outcome, and B) in this instance in particular, with the number of respondents, you can pretty well bet that a close against an overwhelming consensus will be taken immediately to ANI, where a furor will be raised, but support for the consensus approach (rather than one admin's supervote) will almost certainly be endorsed--but only after a great deal of wasted community time. So let's hope that the outcome you are contemplating does not occur. Snow ^{let's rap} 18:52, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

!votes that simply dismiss the BLP concerns and don't engage them (that simply say "tons of sources, BLP concerns are just CRYBLP") are, in my view, probably going to be discounted. The point of an RfC is to gather thoughtful feedback how various policies apply. But you forecast differently. This is all speculation. We will see at the close. Jytdog (talk) 19:14, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: What is your definition of "engage"? Are there any include !votes that you believe "engaged" BLP concerns? ^Falling_Gravity 21:16, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. I read through from the top and the first include !vote that actually addresses AVOIDVICTIM is Herostratus and soon after, Anythingyouwant, but even they didn't address the public/private aspect of BLP; even The Wordsmth (who I am pinging here out of respect) didn't address AVOIDVICTIM or the public/private aspect. Almost every vote just flatly says "BLP doesn't apply" - a mere nod - and doesn't engage it. Mentioning BLP is not engaging with it, and those who say "he's dead" are not acknowledging that BLP applies to the recently dead. btw, in these diffs I fleshed out my !vote to fully engage with V and NPOV arguments that are relevant; I failed to give a fully thoughtful answer myself the first time. Jytdog (talk) 21:29, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

There is nothing to engage with, because nobody has ever stated specifically and concisely how stating that Wikileaks offered a reward is a BLP violation. When an editor with 10 years and 30,000 edits states that he doesn't see how BLP applies, you can't just discard that opinion because you imagine that he somehow didn't "engage" your argument to your satisfaction. You made your argument. A bunch of people read it. roughly a third of them agreed with you and roughly two thirds of them rejected your argument. It is time for you to drop the stick and accept that fact that the consensus is against you. No magiic words will change that fact. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:40, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

So glower-y! Consensus will be determined by the closer. Jytdog (talk) 22:27, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Except, not really. The closer isn't empowered to "determine" the consensus, even if an admin; the consensus is established by the consensus-building process, and the closer summarizes it, as best they can read it. They can point out the special policy considerations and, in a close-call, they might interpret the consensus in light of the fact that some parties misread a larger community consensus, but the closer doesn't get to just re-write the results of a voluminous discussion where people reasonably disagreed about what the right editorial approach is.

Guy is right; I would have put it more tactfully, but maybe it really is time to drop the stick here. The chance that an admin is going to agree so strongly with you that he tosses aside this consensus on principle is less than one in a thousand, I'd wager (probably much less still, given the scale of the consensus opinion against your preferred approach). But even if that happened, there would be an immediate review, with functionally no chance that the consensus would not be upheld. You're an experienced-enough editor that I think you must know this, if only you took a step back far enough to see it. "!Votes are not votes" arguments not withstanding, a clear consensus involving a large number of good-faith contributors is still going to prevail. I urge you, after you've next left this discussion, to consider whether this is really a useful and productive use of our resources. A lot of volunteer time has already been expended here on an issue that, realistically speaking, was resolved by consensus days ago. I'd ask that you consider whether there is anything to be gained by dragging the matter out. You, individually, have been very civil in your discussion, but the situation will nonetheless become WP:disruptive at some point, and sometimes that line creeps up when it seemed to be far away! Snow ^{let's rap}

My point is that attempting to use the same brush to tar the entire opposition with a broad assessment like that--saying that "many" of the !votes don't "engage" with BLP--without yourself engaging in specifics, is not helping anything. An overwhelming majority of responding editors do not feel that BLP applies as you (seem to) feel it applies--and most of them have addressed the reading of policy, even if they don't emphasize the arguments you would. Hoping that near 80% of the good-faith perspectives shared here by (mostly randomly selected and previously un-involved) editors in good standing will be disregarded, and the policy interpretation of the remaining portion adopted, seems like a pipe dream to me, and, no offense, like a oblique way of saying "the other side just doesn't get it, let's ignore them". And that just sets people on both sides up to have entrenched, intractable positions, rather than contemplating reasonable compromise solutions or accepting consensus when that's just not possible.

If you want to prompt specific editors who you feel did provide sufficient rationale to explain their positions for additional feedback, I would think that a good thing. Suggesting that the appropriate outcome should be to toss aside the overwhelming weight of considered opinions expressed above simply because you don't think the follow from policy? Not so much. Again, to the extent you feel that they are acting reflexively and without full review or consideration of the policies, they might say the same about you. Just to take one example, they might say you are ignoring WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT. Let me express to you what I think is the consensus finding of this discussion:

BLP does not (and cannot) trump principles of neutrality and the objective coverage of what WP:Reliable sources say on the subject of an article, nor can editors misrepresent what the weight of those sources say regarding the topic simply because they feel the details are salacious. The principle that Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED derives directly from the principle of neutrality, which is enshrined in one of this project's pillar policies. Such policies represent the oldest, broadest, and most fundamental principles of this community and the primary guidelines by which we must formulate our content decisions. Other "lower" policies can qualify these broad community priorities, if the pillar policies are silent on a particular nuanced issue and the qualification does not directly conflict with them. If an editor feels that the guideline being pushed (even one which has gained as much scope and influence as BLP), conflicts with the much-greater community consensus enshrined in a pillar policy, they are free to use that as a (completely rational) foundation for their consensus-based argument. Here the apparent conflict is between WP:Neutrality/WP:WEIGHT and WP:AVOIDVICTIM (a small, relatively recent, and very unclearly defined section of BLP). To the extent they do conflict, the much broader and fundamental principles of neutrality and weight will prevail, since they have much more endorsement in the community, by a rather epic margin.

Now I don't know the history of how AVOIDVICTIM ended up in BLP--whether it was the result of consensus of editors working on that policy page or if it was vetted more thoroughly in a community forum--but even giving it every benefit of the doubt, I cannot fathom that it can be interpreted in the manner you are suggesting why apply it here and still be consistent with broader community consensus on when and where we can omit or censor relevant, useful information for our readers that is central to understanding the notability of a topic we have an article for. To do so would be damaging to the project on multiple levels.

For starters, it would allow details to be kept out of a wide class of articles (literally all articles on crimes that have "victims" that are not themselves notable) many of which may have major social significance--and, more important to our purposes here, are covered in detail in reliable sources. And I don't view that concern as exaggerated or hyperbolic, because the particular case being considered here is actually highly-attenuated from the wording of AVOIDVICTIM and the purpose of BLP generally. The detail that the minority want sanitized from the article in this instance has nothing to do with a charged characterization (correct, false, libelous or otherwise) of a living/recently deceased person (BLP broadly) and it doesn't even have anything to do with the "victimization" of an individual (AVOIDVICTIM). It solely relates to the action of a third party not in any way related to the crime; how does reporting that Wikileaks offered a reward for more information "prolong the victimization" of a murder? I don't see how it does, but even if it did, it would still not be cause to excise this material because BLP does not mandate the removal of controversial details about anyone's conduct, it only establishes a higher burden of sourcing to establish an objective, weighted consideration of what is truly neutral information, and that bar has been met and exceeded here many times over.

Other than turning our editorial procedures (regarding crimes against otherwise non-notable persons) into a quagmire of subjectivity, the approach you and the rest of the minority endorse would be damaging to the project in another way: our credibility. We gain absolutely nothing from trying to hide details on a subject that every other major source discussing that topic covers at length, just because we find those details unpalatable or just plain weird. As I noted above, there are three, and only three possible outcomes to doing that, for a given reader. 1) The reader may be unfamiliar with even the cursory details of a story, in which case we've withheld the one detail that makes it a salient, notable topic, despite the fact that, in this case, we predicated the article's WP:notability on sources that mostly only discuss the crimes because of that detail--hooray for complete obfuscation! 2) The reader may be somewhat familiar with the story, in which case they may well be confused about just who has the story right and may draw erroneous conclusions as to whether we omitted the detail for being factually inaccurate. Hooray for muddying the waters! Or 3) The reader may be very familiar with the topic and therefore familiar with the facts we are omitting, in which case they will know we are censoring important information (and in this case, the single most notable fact about the event that is the topic of the article). Hooray for damaging our reader's confidence in our ability to present a complete and neutral account of events! The mind-boggling counter-productiveness of this approach is made all the more obvious by the fact that readers can go straight from one of the first two scenarios directly to the third simply by reading the very sources we cite in this article! Honestly, I know my tone has grown a little cheeky here, but my point is that when we try to hide salient details that are robustly covered in our sources, we're not serving anyone's interests--not the victim, not the project, and certainly not the people we are creating this content for in the first place.

In short, I think the policies you have cited have in fact been thoroughly addressed in the discussion above, the consensus of which I just summarized in as much detail as I feel can possibly be crammed into a single overview of the perspectives. It's just that the arguments you predicate upon those policies have been rejected. By the large majority of editors commenting here. I.e. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Just my reading of the discussion though. Snow ^{let's rap} 21:59, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

It is not hard to read each !vote and see if they actually discuss all the relevant policies or not. this is one of those RfCs where are there is more than one policy involved; this happens sometimes and a good closer will make sure they deal with thoughtful arguments about all of those policies; somebody who came to a conclusion and !voted it, but doesn't explain how they resolved the tension among the policies doesn't help the closer understand the consensus on how all the policies apply and play off each other. (you can compare it to a deletion discussion - a source with a passing mention doesn't count toward notability; a !vote with a passing mention of a relevant policy is likely to be discounted the same way.) Anyway, again this is all speculative. The closer will do as he or she does, and we can think about that then. Jytdog (talk) 22:13, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

THE ANSWER IS NO. We are not going to retain a version that is clearly against consensus. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:27, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

In response to Snow Rise. I notice that you brought up that Wikipedia is not censored. It is true that it is not as a matter of policy, however a caveat seems to arise in regards to your interpretation where is also says, per WP:CENSOR: "Content will be removed if it is judged to violate Wikipedia policies (especially those on biographies of living persons and neutral point of view.... So this seems to give priority to BLP and actually conforms to BLP.

In any case, what you also seem to be advocating overall is that we act as a news oulet in this matter. It seems your rationale is - since the newspaper, tv stations, magazines, and webzines cover this, then this should be included in our encyclopedic endeavor (our encyclopedia project). An unintended consequence of this point of view is that we would produce text as the news cycle dictates, rather than according to GNG, NPOR, NPOV, BLP, and so on. Inherent in notablity, NPOV, and BLP is a time frame that goes well beyond the length of any news cycle. For example - the ten year test WP:10YT:

• "In ten years will this addition still appear relevant? If I am devoting more time to it than other topics in the article, will it appear more relevant than what is already here."
• Also, "For example, in 2004 devoting more space to the U.S. presidential election, 2004, rather than the U.S. presidential election, 2000, might have seemed logical. Nevertheless, in ten or twenty years, when neither event is fresh, readers will benefit from a similar level of detail in both articles".

And, there seems to be a misunderstanding about consensus in this instance. Per WP:CONLIMITED: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope."

Essentially what this is saying a local consensus among a limited group of editors, which is what we have here, at one place and time cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. This RFC is and was a local event. It will not be able to contravene policy - which has a Wikipeida wide consensus - in other words community consensus on a wider scale. This includes the given policy sub-sections. The only way that I can see to change a given policy is to directly conduct an RFC pertaining to that policy or an aspect of that policy. And if you look on the talk pages of those policy or guideline pages - you will see policy or guideline related discussions and some of these propose changes to certain aspects of policies or guidelines. Steve Quinn (talk) 00:54, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Steve, unfortunately, I don't have time for more than bulletin points here, so please excuse my brevity and do not mistake it for curtness. I say this because I'm going to start of with something that might feel a bit confrontational. I feel that your major points selectively quote me in a way that substantially mis-chracterizes my stances:

• You seem to be suggesting that I'm invoking WP:NOTCENSORED without context or nuance or appreciation that it is qualified by a large body of policy. Not so. If you re-read, you will find that I mention NOTCENSORED incidentally as I begin to discuss the relevant policy exceptions to the rule. I feel I've provided a pretty detailed (indeed, if anything, excessive) discussion above as to what I think is the appropriate course of action for editors when they feel the wording of multiple policies (of varying levels of community endorsement) seem to conflict. That, I believe, is the pertinent discussion here: community consensus on the narrow issues here not shouting "BLP!" or "No! Not BLP--NOTCENSORED!" without nuance. I can't fathom that I could make how I feel the relevant policies and community consensus on this particular matter parse out more than I have done so above, without becoming disruptive.
• I am well aware of the Wikipedia-to-news feedback conundrum, but I feel I have addressed this too, ad nauseum, above. But in brief again, it's pretty clear that this story is getting quite enough traction in major national and global press regardless of whether Wikipedia wants to comment. Our lack of any kind of coverage of the one aspect of this story from which it's notability as an encyclopedia article extends is counter-intuitive and bizarre in the extreme--every source listed on this article is focused on the one fact we are omitting. Basically we have a situation here where some don't want this article to exist, but they can't argue it out on notability guidelines, because the sourcing is so robust. So instead the approach has become to cull the elements found to be objectionable, even though they are the heart of the coverage of our sources used to establish notability. This is an approach that if very harmful to our content and our credibility, in my opinion. We should either cover this topic or not, but covering in a manner that misleads as to core nature of the subject is just not a solution.

Nor do I accept the non-sequitor-based argument that we are somehow harming people by providing neutral coverage of this topic based on what is said in WP:reliable sources. The news-to-wikipedia-to-news cycle you reference is usually invoked regarding bogus information getting interjected into the newstream. That is not what is going on here. By including this information we would only be repeating that which is discussed in numerous high-profile media sources. We do NO favors to the family of Seth Rich by ignoring the plain reality here; if anything we are losing out on an opportunity to use the many sources we have here which condemn the very conspiracy theories the parents take such exception to. More importantly than that, we have a broader ethical obligation than that which we have to the parents (I say with reluctance, because I do feel for them). AVOIDVICTIM does not in any way tell us to ignore salient aspects of this story, just because they happen to be bizarre and I still have not seen a single argument which actually connects the dots to explain how it supposedly does. Even if it did, we would be compelled to ignore apply it in a manner consistent with older, pillar policies and the fundamental community consensus that they represent regarding neutrality and other central editorial principles adopted by this project. For a more nuanced explanation of my perspective on this point, please re-read my post above.

• Lastly, I am not arguing that we should develop a consensus on this TP to alter the wording of AVOIDVICTIM. Nor am I arguing that local consensus should not comport with broader, established community consensus, as enshrined in policy. I'm really confused as to how you derived that notion from my post, given it is the exact opposite of the central predicate upon which I based all other points I had to make, and I feel I made that point excessively, redundantly clear. With respect, I think you are only partially processing what I am saying and filling in gaps with what you expect the other side to say, not the arguments I am actually making. What I did state is that, in forming a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, editors sometimes (indeed, generally) need to navigate between multiple different sources of broader community consensus, and that they should give greatest respect and weight to those policies which represent the oldest, most broadly-held, and fundamental principles/consensus that are on point to the issue at hand. Here we have to parse the very vague wording of AVOIDVICTIM; giving effect to the interpretation espoused by the minority here would be incredibly problematic on many levels (again, please see above) and that interpretation would also fly int he face of WP:NPOV, WP:WEIGHT, WP:V and a slew of other central policies regarded as fundamental by the community at large (yes--more fundamental than even BLP). That is why you are facing such massive resistance from experienced editors here. It's not because we're trying to ignore a policy we don't like. We just don't think it can possibly be applied as you and the rest of the minority argue, not without violating key tenets editing on Wikipedia and creating some massive problems for our reliability as an encylopedia.

This is the most I can say on the matter for now. And besides, I think I've said more than my fair piece here. I know I must sound like a broken record on this point, but I direct you to read my above comments again if you really want to understand my stances here. I don't mean to sound incivil, but it honestly feels to me as if you did not thoroughly read it, but rather focused on just which policies I cited without proper consideration of the manner in which I referenced them. Nevertheless, good luck to all of you in sorting this out as I am absent the coming week. Best to everyone! Snow ^{let's rap} 02:22, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Jeepers - 5000 words, and you manage to ignore the elephant in the room. The shooting took place on July 10, 2016. At the time, it was reported in the local news as a local crime, and it justly did not make it into Wikipedia because neither the victim nor the crime are notable (present tense fully intentional). The usual conspiracy mongers that seized upon the incident because of the victim’s employer were ignored by all reliable news media. A month later, on August 9, 2016, Wikileaks/Assange tweeted the so-called reward offer and, in an interview on Dutch television that same day, coyly tapdanced around his suggestion/insinuation/hint that the victim of the shooting may have been the source of the stolen emails, in effect accusing the victim of having committed a crime. This garnered him a new round of interviews and lots of publicity at a time when interest in the DNC email publication had died down, and he continued to suggest, insinuate, and hint despite the parents of the victim having repeatedly and strongly objected to this slander. Bringing the so-called reward offer into the article also brings this baggage into it. (And on August 10, 2016, one day after the initial allegation, TrollingJihadist created this Wikipedia article.)

You are the one who wants to violate key tenets of editing on Wikipedia! WP:BLP, WP:BDP, WP:NOCON, WP:NOCONSENSUS all apply. In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit. However, for contentious related to living people, a lack of consensus often results in the removal of the contentious matter, regardless of whether the proposal was to add, modify or remove it. (Emphasis added by me.) Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 06:01, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

You have a peculiar sense of what represents consensus on this project. You've also tried to tip the scales through a rhetorical device which seeks to put opposing views on the defensive by suggesting the "bold" approach has to be inclusion, no matter how many of the responding editors find it to be the correct course of action. The vast majority of respondents here have a different reading of this issue than you--you're free to voice yours, but you've misread the purpose of all of the policies you cited, in my opinion.

You also level a lot of conjecture about what Assange had in mind by his actions, but the fact that you use this original research-based reasoning for your policy decision is kind of irrelevant, because the sources we should be citing here--indeed, each and every one of the sources that currently is cited in this article, but with the core of their focus avoided--don't further any conspiracy theory; almost without exception, they condemn this nonsensical conjecture. They give context to how this crazy notion spread. That's the coverage we ought to be providing; the coverage expressed in the WP:WEIGHT of our sources. This desire to hide an unseemly element of a story (which can't be done; see Streisand Effect), only robs us of the opportunity to inform on a story which people will arrive here expecting to find salient details about--through neutral, encyclopedic coverage. Nothing in BLP (AVOIDVICTIM or elsewhere) advises us to avoid that, and our principle community guidelines on weight and neutrality compel us to cover it. It's no more complicated than that. You say that the facts in question come with baggage. Fair enough. But an essential skill of an editor is stowing baggage when they provide a cogent and complete encyclopedic summary of the event, as covered in reliable sources.

I gather you wish this article did not exist. Right about now, I half wish it didn't as well, even though I think it clearly qualifies under our WP:Notability guidelines. But if it is going to exist, and it is going to be based on the sources we have here, the article must reflect the content of those sources. That's Wikipedia 101. Yet 99% of the focus of those sources is being ignored, and only a few superficial details that are incidental to their coverage are mentioned. Nobody is saying we should participate in the slander or misrepresentation of the victim of this hideous crime. Literally nobody is saying that. But attempting to sanitize a topic does not serve the victim, does not serve our readers, and does not serve our core community principles. That is how I see it. I can't speak for the others in the large majority of editors who feel inclusion is most consistent with our policies. I'm sorry, but the weight of what what our responding editors have concluded here is immensely one-sided, and no amount of suggesting that I am ignoring how this event unfolded (even though I've discussed that in each of my comments above) is going to change that. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:22, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Hear, hear! The above most eloquently sums up my position on why this should be included. SPACKlick (talk) 10:29, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree to disagree. For the record, ‘though, concerning my alleged original-research based reasoning: I don’t consider looking at an MPDC press release on MPDC’s publicly accessible website or reading transcripts of interviews provided by a network to be original research. The MPDC press release is well within the parameters of using primary sources for verifiying dates, times, and facts of the incident. This is the original release; it received some fact-based and human-interest coverage on July 11 but nothing else until that (expletive deleted) Aug 9 interview.

As for Assange, I’d sooner hit myself on the thumb with a hammer than listen to one of his interviews (you may have noticed that I’m not exactly a fan - yeah, I know, have to work on that Wikipedian’s detachment). Reading transcripts provided by the interviewers to see whether the secondary sources are right is a gray area IMO, but it just confirmed the numerous secondary sources some of which are already referenced in the article. I wasn’t proposing to put any of my opinions in any article, let alone this one.

As for a considerable number of the "include" votes, their reasons (well sourced, notable coverage, unique factor, censorship) don't address BLP at all. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 05:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

PS.: You mentioned that you were summoned by a bot. What bot, and is this something other voters who may also have been summoned by a bot should have disclosed? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 05:14, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

• fwiw, i don't reckon anybody is going to convince anybody else through this... you may as well spare yourselves (and people who are watching this page). Space4Time RfCs are advertised by a bot to people who sign up to receive notices of RfCs from it. See Wikipedia:Feedback request service. Jytdog (talk) 06:05, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Inadvertent casting of (what some interpret as) a supervote

To the multiple editors who believe that administrator MastCell has made a declaration in his official capacity as an administrator that one side of this policy-based content dispute is is right and the other side is wrong, he almost certainly did not intend his comments to be interpreted that way. See discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Inadvertent casting of (what some interpret as) a supervote: how to fix? --Guy Macon (talk) 08:52, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• Did I miss something? I'm not aware that MastCell voted one way or the other. I for one arrived at the same conclusions from reading up on WP rules, but since MastCell and other editors had already presented my arguments - and probably better than I could have - why repeat them in my own words? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Let's just take Mastcell's comment to be a warning to adhere closely to BLP. I don't think it advocates one way or another for inclusion of the Wikileaks info. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:52, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree. Nothing Mastcell wrote was incorrect or in any way supported either side of this dispute. The problem is that some here think it did. Please look at the second !vote in the RfC above: " We have an official announcement above from a Wikipedia administrator acting in his administrative capacity:" That's one example of someone (wrongly) thinking that Mastcell made a ruling on the content dispute. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:14, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

• What MastCell did, was provide a clueful and therefore authoritative perspective on how BLP reads on the decision. !votes that fail to take BLP into account at all as many above do, are likely to be given less weight by a clueful closer and if the closer doesn't take BLP into account, the close will be liable to be overturned (not necessarily overturned, but open to be overturned). Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
• As far as I can tell, Mastcell did not cast a vote - so the section title appears to be incorrect. Also, his announcement was not about choosing sides. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 19:47, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not clear on where the line is draw between administrative and editor involvement but considering an RfC vote is clearly on the editor side of the line, it's troubling to see so many votes citing an administrator's comment as justification ("obvious BLP vio per MastCell", "No per MastCell", "No I also agree with MastCell".) That to me isn't meaningfully different than including the administrator's comment and vote directly. D.Creish (talk) 21:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

When people make strong arguments they are cited all the time by others. This is entirely common. The RfC did not even exist when MastCell made their comment; MastCell has no involvement with this RfC. Jytdog (talk) 21:40, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Has it been your experience that when these strong arguments are cited they are accompanied by statements like "we have an official announcement above from a Wikipedia administrator acting in his administrative capacity"? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:15, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The person you're quoting is User:Anythingyouwant, and he was being passive-aggressive and WP:POINTy; he believes the material should be included, but has a chip on his shoulder for reasons that are too tiresome to rehash in detail. I'd suggest that you reconsider whether to take him seriously in the future.

Separately, I think you need to re-read what I wrote. I don't have an opinion on whether the material belongs in the article or not—that is a matter to be resolved by discussion. But the discussion has to be grounded in policy, and right now it's mostly being conducted in utter ignorance of WP:BLP. Any !vote that says "Include: well-sourced", or some variant of that, should be discounted (and will be discounted, if the closing admin is conversant with policy). There isn't really any dispute that the material is well-sourced. But WP:AVOIDVICTIM says that in these specific situations, sourcing alone is not enough, and sourcing is not the only bar to consider for inclusion. The material's encyclopedic value also needs to be weighed against the harm it might cause. I see a lot of editors—including some quite experienced ones—who either don't understand or don't acknowledge this policy requirement. If the discussion here is conducted without reference to WP:BLP and WP:AVOIDVICTIM, then it's not very helpful in resolving the question of whether to include this material.

As a separate matter, WP:BLP requires an affirmative consensus to include this kind of material, and the burden of demonstrating that consensus lies upon those who wish to include it. That was the other aspect of policy that I re-affirmed. I see that my comment has been cited by a number of people who favor excluding the material in question. I would take that to mean that they believe the BLP considerations, and the ethical requirement to avoid contributing to the subject's victimization, is the primary consideration and outweighs the benefit of including the material. That's a valid position, although not one I formally endorse. I don't see a lot of people on the "inclusion" side trying to engage with it, which is disappointing. MastCell ^Talk 00:42, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I strongly support "acknowledging and conforming to WP:BLP" and "upholding WP:BLP". I don't know about others, but that is why I have supplemented my comment with "per MastCell". Since you have clarified that you "don't have an opinion on whether the material belongs in the article or not", if everybody just added "per MastCell", that would demonstrate that they have at least implicitly acknowledged your concerns (even if they don't explicitly touch WP:BLP and WP:AVOIDVICTIM), I believe. Politrukki (talk) 10:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

What you have done is given lip service. Your rationale for your !vote flies in the face of BLP as I noted above. Jytdog (talk) 10:31, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Personally, I going to AGF and say this is a new editor who is confused. Even his or her last Ivote is almost a mish-mash. I enjoyed his or her response to Mastcell. Also, because this is a new editor I proclaim that he or she can have two Ivotes (which I believe they already did)Steve Quinn (talk) 20:42, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

There's no hurry

An editor inserted the material with an edit summary of "The RfC is now at two to one in favor of including this material. Do not remove against this clear consensus."

But that's not how it works? Right? Unless the material is part of the stable version of some term of standing before the RfC (in which case it should not have been removed in the first place). If it is, the editor needs to say that that's his reason. Otherwise wait for the RfC close. Therefore I reverted the edit and open this thread for the editor to discus the matter and make his case for the edit if he wants to.

There's no hurry here. We want to get this right eventually even if it takes a couple-few years... we're here for the long haul (vita brevis Wiki longus). RfC's are not votes. There may be other factors. If the closer feels that the WP:BLP argument is valid it pretty much trumps everything. FWIW speaking as someone who thinks the BLP argument is not valid and who voted to include the material. Herostratus (talk) 20:50, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

"BLP" is not a magic word that allows you to keep material out of an article for 30 days despite a clear consensus for inclusion. See WP:CRYBLP. There is no BLP issue with the material I added, and the consensus for inclusion (both numerically and by examining the quality of the arguments) is clear. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:13, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

"BLP is not a magic word that allows you to keep material out of an article for 30 days despite a clear consensus for inclusion... well of course it is, provided the claim is correct. Ask any admin or old hand. We do not for instance libel people or allow that sort of stuff in the project. It's a magic word.

The question is, is the BLP claim justified or not? I don't know -- and neither do you. Let the person closing the RfC weigh the matter. (I have an opinion on the matter and so do a lot of people, but so?) But we want to be careful whenever there's a reasonable claim that BLP applies. I don't think the people invoking BLP here are madmen or trolls, although I don't think I agree with them. So there's a reasonable claim. So slow down and calm down when considering possibly BLP-related issues.

In closing: it's not a vote and there's no hurry. Herostratus (talk) 23:13, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I think maybe Guy's argument was less for closing the discussion down now and more for allowing the material to be added in the interim. After-all, the "formal closure has not yet occurred" argument can be used to support or oppose inclusion of the material. But if we're going to wait weeks on end to formally close a discussion, even though the consensus seems pretty firm, we do need to consider the disposition of the article content in the meantime, and the impact upon readers who come here for relevant and up-to-date information.

Again, if I had been the one to originally add the content, I would have waited to replace it until after a formal close. That said, if I'm put on the spot to make a call between two parties with opposing views on this, my inclination is that it's reasonable to include the information in the interim, given the strength of the consensus and the fact that I, like you, have not seen an argument that convinces me that inclusion violates a single provision of any policy. If a closure finds the information should not be included (exceedingly unlikely in this instance, I think we agree), then we can always re-remove the content then. But while there may be no hurry to nail this all down permanently, I wouldn't take that argument farther to say that our default approach, as we debate the issue, should be that we keep out information that is at the very core of the topic's notability. Not when every one of our sources mentions the information in question as the primary cause of their coverage of the event. Snow ^{let's rap} 23:47, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

For the record, I would have waited for the close, but given there is a pretty clear consensus here (it's actually closer to 3/4 than it is to 2/3), WP:BRD does indeed seem to allow for the inclusion, even ahead of the formal close. Now, for the sake of collaboration and calm, it might be worth withdrawing the content until the close, but the counter-argument is that the article has been deprived long enough of centrally-important information that the large majority of editors here feel she be included. My larger concern, though, is that if people are embracing pie-in-the-sky notions that the large consensus is going to be overturned by an ambitious admin who will invoke his tools to defend their minority perspective, then views are clearly getting entrenched and we might be in store for even more disruption when the time does come to call this, be it this week or next. I really do encourage those who are continuing to challenge the very strong consensus here to question whether this is a good use of their editorial time or that of the others who are forced to re-hash the arguments yet again. That is to say, I'd like them to consider that is possible to follow your editorial obligation to call the issue as you see it and still accept that there is realistically little to no chance that your perspective is going to be adopted, as the consensus is clear. I recognize a lot of old faces here, which means a lot of good work is being deferred to pursue an issue with almost certainly no gain for any of us. Snow ^{let's rap} 22:32, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

• Speaking to the topic of this subsection, it's bad form and aggressive to act on the outcome of an RfC before it is closed and in this case doubly problematic with regard to the BLP issue that is open until it is resolved. I won't make any drama over it (why bother? it will stand or fall with the close of the RfC), but wow. With regard to the outcome being obvious, I very much disagree, as I have stated above.

!votes have slowed to a trickle (one in the last week), so I would not object to asking at AN if an admin would close this early. But we need a close. Jytdog (talk) 03:14, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Could we please have an early close to Talk:Murder of Seth Rich#RFC: Should the WikiLeaks reward be mentioned in the article? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:23, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Wow, User:Guy Macon -- this edit note and the edit you made under it, and this comment and its edit note, are making you ripe for AE. Whew. Jytdog (talk) 20:33, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Guy, see also my notes on your AN posting here and its follow up here Jytdog (talk) 21:00, 11 September 2016 (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.