Talk:Lana Stempien

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Good article Lana Stempien has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on April 14, 2007.
Maintained The following user(s) are actively contributing to this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources:
Quadzilla99 (talk • contribs • email)
This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.

Contents

[edit] Standards

Question - does this article really meet the standards to be part of Wikipedia? 192.73.53.5 09:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC) Steve

See WP:NOTABILITY, it is the product of multiple of multiple non-trivial works, two local newspaper articles, and an article from msnbc.com solely dedicated to the events. Quadzilla99 09:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I found your article through the good article nominations. I was mostly interested in what constitutes a good article since I'm new to WP and trying to learn. Leaving the nomination aside, this article has challenged me to think hard about what constitutes "notability" and what type of information is suitable for inclusion.
My gut reaction on reading the article was "Why is this here?". The big obstacle I have to overcome is the fact that we can't really know what happened. Presumably the issue is still under investigation and there may be an outcome some day.
In my opinion a number of possible explanations for the known facts exist involving various combinations of murder, suicide, accidental death or other causes and when I think about the range of outcomes I find it hard to justify inclusion based on any of the more probable outcomes given that the individuals are not notable otherwise.
For example if both deaths were accidental or if one was accidental and the other suicide I wouldn't think that the article should be kept since accidents and suicides are, unfortunately, common and neither person is notable other than for the circumstances described in the article.
Combinations of murder and suicide lead to the same general conclusion, for the same reasons, unless the murderer has done or will do something notable. (e.g. crime spree, a career in lake piracy, an unusual method of killing and so-on)
Other causes, if they exist would have to be highly unusual and noteworthy. Some sort of psychotic disease or alien abduction spring to mind. Be patient with the facetious nature of the last, I'm conducting some thought experiments.

After doing all this thinking I have to ask a couple of questions:

1. Does the article meet the criteria of "What Wikipedia in Not"? See WP:NOT#INFO "Wikipedia properly considers the long-term historical notability of persons and events, keeping in mind the harm our work might cause. The fact that someone or something has been in the news for a brief period of time does not automatically justify an encyclopedia article."
2. Does the articles notability rest on implied speculation on future outcomes that can't be predicted and which may well turn out to not justify inclusion? I guess what I'm saying is "just because it's mysterious doesn't make it noteworthy." See WP:NOT#CBALL. I'm not saying that you anywhere speculate. It's the mystery (and the speculation that it creates in the mind of the reader) that makes this story noteworthy.

Couple of issues wrt to the article proper:

  • The first paragraph and the section after "Discussion" contain redundant iformation. Might warrant some cleanup.
    • Could you clarify? Quadzilla99 00:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC
      • The first paragraph and the first paragraph of the section after "Discussion" are very similarly worded and contain many repeated facts. I would suggest that you combine the two, perhaps into a section organized by by time line entitled "Events around the Death and Disappearance".
      • Another suggestion for readabilities sake would be to have a section about the personalities and their relationship, this would allow you to combine and contrast the two main personalities taking information from the introductory paragraph about Lana, the section on Chuck and the information contained in the "Courtship" section.
      • The introductory paragraph should introduce the subject of the whole article and not focus on Lana. The subject of the article is the death and disapperance, with the events,personalities and the puzzling circumstances being the meat of the article.
      • p.s. I think I mentioned that I'm pretty new to WP. Please feel free to correct me if I'm doing something wrong. I guess that, by putting the "hold" on the articles nomination, I've committed myself to review the article which may be a bit over my head. Regards JohnJardine 00:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Okay, I see what you're saying. I'll try to re-word the opening para. I assume you had a quick look at WP:LEAD by the way. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article so the stuff in the lead should repeat stuff in the article. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, you're not saying that things in the article repeat things in the lead are you? Quadzilla99 00:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
        • I think what I'm getting at is the lead is almost verbatim the first paragraph of "Disappearance" and misses the opportunity to clue the reader into some interesting stuff that can be elucidated (without teasing)later on. The key phrases of WP:LEAD are "capable of standing alone", "concise overview - one person died and another disappeared under mysterious circumstances", "summarizing important points - inconsisitancies in the events- some evidence that there was animousity", "explaning notability - broad coverage in the Michigan area - many interested parties ", and "briefly describing notable contraversies - suspected foul play - police actions called into question - families in conflict" I added what I would consider the salient points in italics. Regards JohnJardine 01:24, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
          • I re-worded the lead somewhat. Quadzilla99 19:04, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • "It is considered unlikely by them that she would go into the water wearing the water-resistant watch" Not clear who "them" are. Is there a citation associated with this?
Also why would someone find it unlikely that someone would go in the water wearing a 'water-resistant' watch?
    • Someone added that recently it's not what was in the source. Quadzilla99 00:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting article on all sorts of levels, I enjoyed thinking about the issues it raises. Regards JohnJardine 16:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest the article lacks a neutral emphasis if it asserts that elevated carbon monoxide levels would be relevant only if the couple had decided to swim near the stern's exhaust outlet. Given the absurdity of choosing to swim in cold, choppy water while wearing cherished jewelry, it is much more likely that the couple did succumb to carbon moxide intoxication but that it took place in the confined spaces of the boat. A discussion of exhaust system integrity and the effect of a quartering sea on the exhaust outlet's functioning on that particular boat would be viewed as a far more scholarly treatment of the disappearance than discussing a safety-conscious boater with a schedule to maintain deciding to go swimming in cold water and leave the ladder up and her jewelry on her person. Not all marine deaths due to carbon monoxide take place just abaft of the exhaust outlet. Open air intoxication by carbon monoxide is more prevalent than usually thought. If the fenders were deployed due the approach of another boat, monoxide intoxication would be even more likely. TinkersDam (talk) 10:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA nom

One or two notes, this article is short but comprehensive, I can't find any sources that I haven't used. Also, the title was chosen instead of simply Lana Stempien as any article on this subject will focus almost exclusively on her death, and also because this way I can include detailed info on Rutherford. Quadzilla99 21:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.


It makes no sense to dub this article "death of Lana Stempien", and this is clearly inconsistent with WP naming conventions. Other articles about people who are famous because of one particular incident are still given the name of the subject person. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 13:33, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose - The author of the article notes why he chose the titled in the section GA Nom above which make a degree of sense given that the notability of this article if any stands on the perceived relationship between the two protaganists and the actions of their families, the authorities and the media which would IMHO make it an article about an event and not a person. I'm a new user, as I note in my comments above and have taken on the task of reviewing the article for it's GA nomination. Given that I still think that there are issues beyond whether or not this ever becomes a good article. I'm still wrestling with the possibility that this article might not be suitable for inclusion for the reasons stated in my somewhat laboured analysis above. I would appreciate a comment on this last. JohnJardine 14:19, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Mrs. Stempien does not actually warrant an article herself, in my opinion; it is the story of her death that does. Per WP:NOT#INFO (see number 10), the article should probably be named after the event, not the person. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 20:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The current title accurately describes the scope of the article. Dekimasuよ! 08:49, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 17:53, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA review

[edit] Successful good article nomination

I am glad to say that this article which was nominated for good article status has succeeded. This is how the article, as of June 25, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Yes, very well written and MOS compliant.
2. Factually accurate?: Thanks to the exceptionally good job of using citations this article is easily verified.
3. Broad in coverage?: Yes, as thorough as can be.
4. Neutral point of view?: No issues here.
5. Article stability? Yes.
6. Images?: I think this is an acceptable fair-use rationale, as both subjects are (legally) dead and thus it's not replaceable.
7. Notable?: Not a standard question, but I wanted to address it as I passed the article. This is close to the minimum standard of an article that passes the notability guideline. Indeed, some might argue that this level of sourcing is available for almost any crime story that appears on national network news. But, as the notability guideline is written, this clearly passes. And because it's otherwise well done it clearly demonstrates that good-articles can be written by something with relatively low-notability. That's a significant point. Often times I'm frustrated by media-sensation type articles on Wikipedia, but if the quality on all those articles were one day as high as this, I'm not sure anyone would still have problems.

If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to a GA review. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status. — JayHenry 00:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA review — kept

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. Regards, Ruslik 13:50, 27 September 2007 (UTC)