Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carolyn Wasilewski

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was No consensus. The person never generated any coverage, as far as I can see from this debate. The event was broadly covered at the time (up until about a year after the event) and then there was a single follow-up article 46 years later (not counting one that referred to the event but did not nae the victim). Based on this, several editors find that there is lasting coverage. Personally, I would !vote delete on this one, but as this has now been around for almost three weeks, I am going to close it instead. As closing admin I have to evaluate the consensus in this debate and I don't find one, hence I close as "no consensus". There are suggestions to rename the article or to merge it elsewhere (which I think are excellent suggestions), but that can be discussed and decided on the article talk page. Randykitty (talk) 03:56, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Carolyn Wasilewski

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No indication of notability under WP:GNG. Search for additional coverage has turned up nothing. Author removed WP:PROD after adding one contemporary source, so I'm assuming they, like me, were unable to find any real coverage even of this event, nevermind the person. Even if the event was significant, per WP:BIO1E and WP:NOTNEWS, it's not clear that this passes the threshold. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC) 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Maryland-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete – My sympathies to her family, but sorry to say, in this time and age, non-notable. ShoesssS ^Talk 18:17, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: I echo @Shoessss's sympathies to her family but tragedy ≠ notability automatically or per se. Quis separabit? 21:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Carolyn Wasilewski was also known as Carol Wells.[1] Wasilewski/Wells was the inspiration for John Waters' film Cry-Baby.[2][3] Might be worth a merge and redirect as a plausible search term. Otherwise, GNews Archives don't reveal any lasting notability of the event.[4] - Location (talk) 02:38, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa. That's a huge bump in the direction of notability, frankly. It's not even mentioned in the Cry Baby article. Good catch there Location. I don't have time for it right now, but this might help open up the search terms a bit. Probably won't go to notability for the BDP, but it might be worth a merge to Death of Carolyn Wasilewski or, as you say, a merge to Cry Baby. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 02:44, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I took a closer look at this and it seems to me that it wasn't such a big story that a movie was made about it, but rather that it was a local story that affected John Waters, a Baltimore native. Unless I'm missing something, I think that we should merge some of the content from this page into Cry-Baby and add a section about the inspiration for the film/musical, based on sources such as this one. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 16:10, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - per user 0x0077BE and Location revelations and suggestions. This is clearly notable.--BabbaQ (talk) 13:21, 1 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I am still a delete vote, and I think Location is as well. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 15:21, 1 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think I would suggest a merge and redirect to Cry-Baby. - Location (talk) 16:30, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep a Baltimore murder that made headlines in Spokane, and is still being written about by newspaper columnists 60 years later is absolutely notable. Keep and add the "Cry Baby" material.ShulMaven (talk) 20:01, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Added the Cry Baby references located above, which are powerful, along with a recent Baltimore Sun column describing the murder as a "Baltimore legend" without using her name.ShulMaven (talk) 20:27, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Typing her name + murder + Baltimore into newspaper archive searches turns up scores of articles from around the world, coverage that continued for over a year after the murder. I believe that deletion would be a case of WP:Presentism. i.e., if this had happened in 2014, there would be no doubt of notability (in the category sensational murders drawing wide attention due to lurid lipstick details and failure to identify culprit). I think the same criteria should apply to old sensational murders as to recent ones, because WP:NOTTEMPORARY. ShulMaven (talk) 20:59, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have searched "Carolyn Wasilewski" + "murder" + "Baltimore" which turns up GNews hits right after the murder in 1954 (not uncommon), but only one recent news hit: an article in the March 18, 2000 issue of The Baltimore Sun. (A previous article in the March 11, 2000 alludes to the murder but doesn't even mention her name.) That's it. Per WP:EVENT, lasting coverage reflecting interest beyond the local area is usually required. (See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Walter Sartory and a lengthy write-up of that subject in a local magazine.[5]) - Location (talk) 16:30, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Shulmaven. The murder has been a source of coverage for 50 years.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 03:53, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be in direct contradiction with the facts. It was covered in the 50s and there was two follow-up story 50 years later, one of which, as Location mentions, didn't even mention her by name. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 19:06, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a dog in this fight, in fact, I didn't come here to fight. I came because I got curious about the AFD process, and the AFD process as it goes forward with murder cases. I am sorry if I was not clear. There were 2 Baltimore Sun column in 2000, one that mentioned the murder without naming the victim, but that provoked a 2nd columnist to revisit the affair. I have access to some archives of old newspapers, so I typed in her name and the wire service stories with their lurid lipstick detail ricocheted around the country and the English-speaking world for a little while. This happens with murders, but not with all murders, just murders that, like this one, catch the public imagination - however briefly. What is on the page is pretty much everything I know about the murder, but to me it seems sufficient to keep. Interest among Baltimoreans continued 50 years after the death. A playwright remembers the case and it influences him to write a musical about greasers and hotrods.ShulMaven (talk) 20:40, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A number of national AP and UP articles from 1954 are confirmed, as are a string of subsequent Sun articles and elsewhere to the present day. Far more notable than many other murder articles that have passed AfD in the past, except perhaps that this one is 60 years old and it requires a bit more work on our part to source it.

Nov 9, 1954 UP [6]
Nov 9, 1955 AP [7]
Nov 11, 1954 AP [8]
Nov 12, 1954 UP [9]
Nov 14, 1954 AP [10]
Nov 16, 1954 AP [11]
Dec 17, 1954 (Sun) [12]
May 17, 1955 (Sun) [13]
May 29, 1955 (Sun) [14]
June 15, 1956 (Sun) [15]
Oct 24, 1958 (Sun) [16]
Jan 14, 1959 (Sun) [17]
Jul 1, 1960 (Sun) [18]
March 18, 2000 Baltimore Sun [19]
April 3, 2008 (Broadway.com) [20]

--Milowent • ^hasspoken 21:24, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The murder was on November 8, 1954 and your results show that coverage of it outside of the Baltimore area ceased 8 days afterwards. The 2008 article in Broadway.com gives three sentences to the murder in a blurb about Waters' inspiration for Cry-Baby. This likely warrants a sentence or two in that article, but for a stand-alone article one trivial mention in 60 years outside of the local area is insufficient to pass the WP:PERSISTENCE, WP:GEOSCOPE, and WP:DIVERSE subsections of WP:EVENT. - Location (talk) 22:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We disagree, the murder did receive coverage in places far from Baltimore and WP:NOTTEMPORARY. There is also the Baltimore Sun coverage continuing for years afterwards, and the two columns from 2010. Plus the fact that in addition to the article you mention, Waters discussed the murder in his autobiography. Why delete a well-sourced article on a murder that was once something of a thing in Baltimore?ShulMaven (talk) 23:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As you note, this is an article about an event (i.e. a murder) and the most relevant guideline for events is WP:EVENT. There is no indication that Murder of Carolyn Wasilewski would ever have passed that guideline, so WP:NOTTEMPORARY doesn't apply. - Location (talk) 01:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hope you guys don't mind, I cleaned up the formatting of this discussion to make it easier to follow. Agree that WP:NOTTEMPORARY does not apply, since it's definitely an event. Per WP:BIO1E, I think it is uncontroversial that if we keep this article, it will need to move to Death of Carolyn Wasilewski. I would agree that there was at least national coverage of the initial murder, but there doesn't seem to have been any persistent interest outside of the local Baltimore papers. All references to the murder after 1954 are either in the Baltimore Sun (which for most of them is just reporting on the continued progress of the local investigation, and for the more recent ones are essentially local flavor pieces), or John Waters mentioning the event in connection with his film - which isn't actually about the event, just inspired by the event. The fact that the highest profile coverage of the event is directly related to Cry-Baby is a point in favor of a merge-and-redirect. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 18:19, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:50, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, and rename to Murder of Carolyn Wasilewski: I think the notable aspect here isn't the person but the event. I came across this while doing cleanup/expansion work on List of unsolved deaths, and compared with many that are already there this belongs as a standalone article. If we have an article on Moors murders for their importance in Manchester's modern history (and, unnoted in the article although reliable sources are available confirming it, their influence on a young Morrissey, then we can certainly have this one, renamed, for its similar lasting influence on Baltimore's history and a film by one of its native sons. Daniel Case (talk) 19:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How is this argument anything other than WP:OTHERSTUFF? I'll also note that Moors murders is an Featured article with extensive citations from various reliable sources, including several books on the topic of the murders. As far as I can tell, the extent of the coverage of this Carolyn Wasilewski murder is a brief spat of international coverage, and then intermittent local-news (local to where the event happened) updates on the progress of the investigation, which peters out in the 60s, and then one or two, again, local-news follow-ups on the story 50 years after the initial event. The two aren't even remotely comparable in notability or coverage. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 19:49, 12 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rename. I'm very uncomfortable with these articles for local crime victims, but if we're going to have this one, it should at least be renamed to Murder of Carolyn Wasilewski, as the event is more notable than the person. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 21:49, 15 November 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Yes. Absolutely. Keep and rename. Some murders are notable precisely because of the attention they draw.ShulMaven (talk) 15:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.