Wikipedia:Peer review/Shooting of Stephen Waldorf/archive1

Shooting of Stephen Waldorf

I'm intending to take this to FAC and would appreciate a few extra eyes while I wait for my current FAC to wrap up. The article is about a British police shooting in 1983 that led to major reforms in police firearms policies. I've largely rewritten it from scratch, based mostly on book sources. Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments from Tim

You were kind enough to invite my comments, but I fear you won't get much from me: I can find nothing much to quibble about, and I can't imagine that the article will have any trouble at FAC. Desperate to find some niggle, I managed to come up with:

• Lead images: I wonder why you put Martin's photo first and Waldorf's second. One might have expected it the other way round.
• "was indefinitely postponed due to budgetary concerns" – although in AmE "due to" is generally accepted as a compound preposition on a par with "owing to", in BrE it is not. "Owing to" or, better, "because of" is safer.
• "Peter Waddington, a sociologist specialising in police policy on the use of force, felt that these incidents..." – "felt": I reproduce the relevant entry from the second edition of Fowler:

feel. The Committee feel that Mr. X must share the responsibility for this unfortunate occurrence. 'To feel', says the COD, defining the sense in which the word is here used, 'is to have a vague or emotional conviction that.' That is no way for a committee to record a grave conclusion, with its suggestion that they are guided by intuition rather than by the evidence. Officials, perhaps from a misplaced modesty that shrinks from positive assertion, are too fond of announcing conclusions in this namby-pamby fashion.

• Citations: the one for Death in the City seems to have gone off the rails: the co-author is not Benn Warpole, but Ken Worpole.

And that really is all I can come up with. Your narrative is clear, highly readable and evidently balanced, the citations are wide and look good to me, and you have found what images you can – always tricky for an article about our times. Over to SchroCat, who is far more expert than I am in the history of events of this kind. You'll ping me come FAC, natch. – Tim riley talk 16:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim, I appreciate you having a look. I thought you and SchroCat might have a different perspective on the event, since my interest is less in the event itself and more in the policing reforms it prompted. I believe I've made all the amendments you suggest, except that the photo is not mine; I borrowed it from elsewhere on the Internet. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:21, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

SC

I'll be on this today. I took a quick spin over it yesterday and found one point where you could have used "he" in stead of "Martin", but that was about it. I'll go over more carefully today and see if there is anything at all, but I think I'll be struggling to find things too!- SchroCat (talk) 08:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Rather like Tim I have struggled to find too much to pick u on here, so most of these are either vague suggestions or me being very finicky:

Lead

• Being really, really hypercritical, it's almost a passing reference to Waldorf in the opening line to the rest of the paragraph being about Martin (no other mention of Waldorf—particularly by name—until mid-way through para 2). Not sure there's much you can do about it (or want to do about it), but it was something that struck me.
  • I added another mention of Waldorf but (despite the title), the article isn't really bout him. It could have been anyone who happened to resemble Martin and be seen with his girlfriend.
• "incorrectly believed that the man was Martin" I think we can name "the man" as Waldorf here (new para, repeat name, clarity, etc)
• I remember this when it happened and feeling furious that the police officers who shot and innocent man, then pistol-whipped him while he was lying bleeding went completely unpunished. Re-reading this again, it still angers me!
  • I think the CPS missed a trick in charging s.18; s.20 should have been a slam dunk for the pistol whipping. I think they had to charge attempted murder for appearance's sake but I don't think it stood a chance in front of a jury.
• "five bullet wounds (from 14 shots fired)": it should be five and fourteen or 5 and 14 per the MOS

Background

• Link to cross-dressing?
• "Martin had repeatedly": I think you can use "he" here
  • I want to be absolutely clear that it refers to Martin and not Waldorf.
• Do we have a name for "Martin's girlfriend", rather than referring to her as "Martin's girlfriend" throughout – it would make the description of shooting easier too, referring to her by name, rather than "back-seat passenger"
  • I try hard not to name people who aren't notable and are only connected to one event in the spirit WP:BLPNAME; she is named in the sources but I don't want this to be the top Google hit for her name just because she was a passenger in a car 40 years ago.
    • That's fine. I was judging on the prose only, but agree with your rationale in keeping her name out of it. - SchroCat (talk) 13:43, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Shooting

• "the passenger": I'm wondering why not say "Waldorf"?

Aftermath

• "William Whitelaw": Willie? Isn't that the name he was commonly known by?
  • That's what I thought, but I was criticised in a previous FAC (the Iranian Embassy siege I think) for referring to him as such.
    • I'd plump for "Willie": it's his WP:COMMON NAME and "William Whitelaw" seems wrong (wasn't it Thatcher who said that "Everyone needs a Willie"?) - SchroCat (talk) 13:43, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
• "In a 2023 book chapter": Why not just "in 2023"?
  • I think it's worth specifying where an academic expressed an opinion but if you don't think it's worth it it can go.
    • If you must! (Personally I wouldn't - I think that if it's from a relevant academic that should be enough - and whether a pamphlet, chapter or 6-volume work, bound in hand-tooled, Moroccan leather with gold lettering doesn't change the wording!) I'll leave it to your judgement. - SchroCat (talk) 13:43, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Refs

You'll see from these that I really am scrabbling around to make relevant comments now...

• Not needed for the readers, but as you're using cite book templates, but not sfn templates, there's an error message after all your sources for those of us with certain scripts enabled. Adding ref=none would stop that
  • Not entirely convinced this isn't a problem with the script, but I know a lot of people use it.
• You have three web sources – two archived, one not

That's the lot from me. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 20:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, SchroCat. I believe I've addressed everything of substance. There are a few replies above if there's anything you want to chat about. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:55, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Cheers Harry. Your rationales are all OK - the only one I'd really query is Whitelaw's name. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 13:43, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments from mujinga

• "When the car stopped in traffic in Earl's Court, West London, one of the armed officers, Detective Constable Finch, who had had previous contact with Martin was sent forward on foot to confirm the passenger's identity" - this sentence reads a bit funny to me because of the stacked subclauses, I'd suggest rephrasing
• "Several academics and commentators believed this exemplified an event-driven approach to policymaking and that the British police lacked a coherent strategy for developing firearms policy. " - not entirely what "this" refers back to - the Dear report itself?
• "British police officers do not routinely carry firearms." - this feels a bit abrupt, since I started reading here first and it does begin the article proper. Maybe add year for context eg "In the 1980s... did not"
• "could be withdrawn by authorised officers on the authority of an officer of inspector rank or higher." - two "author-"s close together, suggest changing one
• "He served almost all of a nine-year prison sentenc," - had served?
• "from a specialist unit, C11" - since you explained D11 earlier now I'm interested in what C11 was
• "as was the rear-seat passenger who was grazed by a bullet." - so there were two passengers in the back, one being Martin's girlfriend and another who remains anonymous?
• "variously reported as £120,000 and £150,000" - I would suggest adding that template to say what the amount would be today, because the raw amount doesn't sound at all adequate. However, I think you've told me somewhere before you don't like the template, so up to you.
• No pic of Whitelaw?
• I wouldn't mind a citation directly after 'with a brief to "examine and recommend means of improving the selection and training of police officers as authorised firearms officers, with particular reference to temperament and stress"' since it's a direct quote
• Suggest a comma after Shorthouse in "John Shorthouse a five-year-old boy"
• As the other commenters have already said, there's not a huge amount to criticise here so I've mainly made some prose queries. Seem likes this is well on its way to being a FA! Cheers, Mujinga (talk) 11:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks very much for having a look, Mujinga. There don't seem to be any free photos of Whitelaw. Other than that I think I've got everything. I appreciate your thoughts. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:11, 21 March 2023 (UTC)