Talk:Siege of Sidney Street: Difference between revisions

	Siege of Sidney Street is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia’s Main Page as Today’s featured article on August 30, 2016.
Article milestones Date Process Result March 4, 2016 Featured article candidate Promoted February 23, 2016 Peer review Reviewed Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia’s Main Page in the “On this day…“ column on January 3, 2017, January 3, 2021, and January 3, 2023. Current status: Featured article

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There is a jarring contradiction within the section entitled “Latvian emigre gang”. It states in the first paragraph that “the small group of Latvians … were not anarchists”. Then in the second paragraph, “The probable leader of the group was George Gardstein …, who probably was an anarchist”. Perhaps the solution is to write that the group were not ALL anarchists, but I would not make that edit without knowing the evidence for each claim. Jmchutchinson (talk) 07:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not that jarring: the group weren’t, but one member was. Anyhow, I’ve tweaked accordingly. – Gavin (talk) 09:17, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just because you didn’t fall off your chair doesn’t mean he didn’t. 😉 Jyg (talk) 21:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The state of mind of individual members of the gang is a matter of speculation, unless the member/s themselves make a statement, which they did not. How their state of mind came about is also a matter of speculation. There are no statements to this effect by the members of the gang, in any source.
HarrySime (talk) 14:06, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You need a section ‘speculation by academics as to motive’

if you want to include that speculation as to their state of mind or how it came about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HarrySime (talk • contribs)

1. You need to stop edit warring on this point. As I’ve indicated on your talk page, per WP:BRD and WP:STATUSQUO, the extant version remains unless there is a change in the consensus. The consensus on this article was agreed at an extensive peer review followed by a second review at FAC stage.

2. WP reflects only what the sources say; it also does not ignore key information that the sources say. Please see WP:TRUTH: a. “Editors may not … delete content they believe to be untrue, unless they have verified beforehand with a reliable source“, and our content is “determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of editors“.

3. You are not, I presume, an expert on the Siege, or of the police investigation that interviewed many of the people who knew the gang members (from whom the information could have been garnered), nor do you have a source that states that the opposite is true, or even that questions the information we have provided? As such, and as you cannot point to any reliable source, the information remains.

4. Just to confirm, the information we have in the sentence is sourced to two reliable sources. Two. They both trump what you think may or may not be the case.

5. A section on ‘speculation by academics as to motive’? No. When you’ve been here for more than the handful of edits you have been, you will realise that is not the way we present information in articles. – SchroCat (talk) 16:19, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

czar 12:40, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Czar. That’s just a book review, rather than a new source in itself. The book is new, however, and it’s details are:

• Whitehead, Andrew (2024). A Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney Street. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-7891-4844-2.

I’ll go through it shortly to see if there is anything usable to add to the article. Hopefully the author will have avoided using anything from Geoffrey Barton’s 2017 book. – SchroCat (talk) 13:36, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I’m of the opinion that an infobox on the article would be much more accessible and informative (the purpose of an infobox) in allowing users to understand a simplified version of the article, without having to scroll all the way down to the shootout section. This is the standard across almost all police shootout page on Wikipedia (see this page for a list of major ones). I know HJ Mitchell and SchroCat are against this, which I can’t quite see the reason for. Are they going to modify all other shootout infoboxes which ‘incorrectly’ feature an infobox? Or would they rather this page features the Template:Infobox civilian attack infobox? J.Weir3 (talk) 22:58, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not every subject needs an IB, dumbing down a topic to something so misleading, and the example you have been trying to edit war in shows why they are not always a good idea. The lead—and particularly the first paragraph—do a far better job in making the information accessible and both are far more informative without being misleading. It’s not true to claim that readers have to ‘scroll all the way down to the shootout section’: the information is in the lead, where it appears without the incorrect and false information that appeared in the IB. – SchroCat (talk) 05:57, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In which way is the infobox ‘misleading’?? I’m also not sure I agree that the lead section does a better job; it is quite dense and wordy, which many people may not have the time to read and appreciate fully. A quick infobox detracts nothing from the article, and allows the basics of the topic to be readily understood in a visual manner. J.Weir3 (talk) 11:00, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It contained misleading information, missed out crucial information and left any reader coming in with no knowledge of the subject with entirely the wrong impression of what happened. You’re entitled to disagree about the lead, but you should note that I said “he lead—and particularly the first paragraph—do a far better job in making the information accessible”: I’ve bolded the key part of the sentence. Sometimes an IB is an excellent way of providing some basic dumb facts, but this wasn’t one of those occasions. – SchroCat (talk) 12:17, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add that this is in your opinion. You don’t need to patronise me in order to get your argument across. In my opinion, you and a number of other editors are acting in an incredibly protective way in defence of keeping the article exactly as it is, when in reality Wikipedia exists to develop and present information in the best way. The vast array of other police shootout articles (again see this page) have all seemingly come to the conclusion that infoboxes are acceptable in this sort of article. Many are structurally identical to this one (the idea of this article being narrative and descriptive). Perhaps you can explain why editors of these articles have decided it is best to use an IB in those cases, and why that argument is not applicable here? J.Weir3 (talk) 14:03, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is my opinion, just as you have yours, which is different. I am not being patronising to you at all—I’m re-reading my above comment and can’t see where you think I have been—and I’m sorry if it comes across that way. Yes, some other police articles include an IB, some don’t. IBs do not always readily fit themselves to every situation, which is why the MOS eschews the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and says “The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.” Currently—and as this article has been through two community review processes, including becoming a featured article, there is no consensus that an IB will improve the article. Certainly the version you placed on here didn’t improve it: it rather took it backwards by providing an entirely misleading picture, which surely isn’t what an IB is supposed to do. – SchroCat (talk) 14:11, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I’ve just said to HJ Mitchell, I’m aware my infobox was not necessarily the best, and I understand the criticisms and improvements necessary. However this should not rule out the addition of an infobox at all, especially one which is reviewed and adapted by other editors. J.Weir3 (talk) 14:34, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have a high bar when it comes to the inclusion of idiotboxes as I’ve seen too many which are second rate and give an incomplete and misleading impression to readers. Boxes (IBs, quote boxes, images and anything that isn’t text), automatically draw the eye, so the information they all hold can give too much WP:WEIGHT in relation to the single line bullet point, so they should be used far more carefully than the unthinking application that is all too common on WP nowadays; a large number of the IBs I’ve seen are little more than dross than don’t aid readers, but only leave a misleading half-story, but so far have standards slipped around these awful excrescences, people add them on the thinnest excuse of them being “expected” (a claim no-one can ever truly back up). – SchroCat (talk) 14:54, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The term ‘idiotbox’ is a new one to me and probably sums up your incredibly positive attitude towards, as you say, “anything that isn’t text”. It is clear that you are nowhere near impartial or pragmatic on this issue, which is disappointing for debate. With this said, I expect that you will be removing all other infoboxes from similar articles? Please let me know how that goes. J.Weir3 (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m afraid it seems like you’ve misunderstood much that I’ve tried to explain. I certainly don’t avoid or have anything against non-text elements in articles, indeed, they are extremely important in quality articles. I don’t know why you would expect that I will be removing any IBs from articles: I have not suggested anything of the sort. As for being either impartial or pragmatic on IBs: I am not impartial, but neither are you and neither are many people on WP. I am, however, pragmatic on the issue and don’t try and insist I get my way on multiple articles I don’t understand, which is, unfortunately, something I have seen all too often. – SchroCat (talk) 15:12, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My argument is simply that why would a well thought-through IB which has been approved by a number of editors (conceptually), not be acceptable here, as that is what you are trying to argue I believe? Particularly when similar articles, as I have said many times, feature them without issue? J.Weir3 (talk) 15:19, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Square pegs and round holes. I’ve already said more than once that not all articles benefit from IBs. It’s a point the community broadly agrees with, thus “The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article“. – SchroCat (talk) 15:25, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant, so if an infobox is “not prohibited” here, I should be fine to put one in? Thanks for the clarification. J.Weir3 (talk) 15:30, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.” So no. You can’t cherry pick the bits of instructions you want. – SchroCat (talk) 15:52, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shocker. J.Weir3 (talk) 16:08, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While sports and politician bios and geographic or scientific articles can often benefit from infoboxes, the “factoids in a box” format is particularly unsuited to historical articles such as this one, where the carefully written WP:LEAD section much more usefully presents and contextualizes the most important information about the subject. An infobox (including the suggested one) would misleadingly emphasize less important factoids, stripped of context and lacking nuance, and would compete with the excellent Lead section for attention at the top of the article, discouraging busy readers from reading the Lead section to understand the topic. The key information about the subject that could be included in the box is already discussed in the Lead and in the body of the article (and also appears in Wikidata), and so the box would redundantly contain a 3rd or 4th mention of these facts. MOS:IBX states: “The purpose of an infobox is to summarize, but not supplant, the key facts that appear in an article”, and the one suggested (or any IB that I can imagine) does not and would not usefully summarize the key facts. — Ssilvers (talk) 06:30, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This infobox does indeed summarise but not supplant the article!! How can you possibly summarise it without mentioning some of the facts again? That is a weird argument. Supplanting it would be having information in the infobox that does not feature in the main article, which I do not think I’ve done. Could you also care to explain why almost all other police shootout articles all feature infoboxes? Either of the Template:Infobox military conflict or Template:Infobox civilian attack types. J.Weir3 (talk) 11:04, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The proposed info-box was crude and over-simplistic. Some articles definitely benefit from info-boxes (I have in my time written an article with one main and four subsidiary info-boxes) but this essentially narrative article is not one of them. Tim riley talk 11:51, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Isn’t the whole purpose of the infobox to be simplistic? Also as you mentioned, this whole article is essentially narrative, surely this should be something that is brought into question? Narrative is incredibly boring to read a whole article of. J.Weir3 (talk) 13:58, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“this whole article is essentially narrative, surely this should be something that is brought into question?” I would be fascinated to hear how you would deal with it. – SchroCat (talk) 14:00, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not saying I disagree with the presentation of information, only that it is not a good enough argument to refute the use of an infobox. J.Weir3 (talk) 14:04, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, that’s exactly what you said: “this whole article is essentially narrative, surely this should be something that is brought into question?“. Again, I’d welcome hearing how you would approach writing the article so it is not “essentially narrative”. – SchroCat (talk) 14:56, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you’re going to be so pedantic about an issue so small I might as well give you an answer. Instead of your precious lead section focussing majorly on the build-up to the siege, which can be and is explained (duplication of information) in the appropriate section, it should instead talk about the individuals involved (it doesn’t even mention Sokoloff or Svaars by name!!). There are many more thing’s to be improved if you’d like to hear them. J.Weir3 (talk) 15:17, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not being pedantic at all, nor an I “precious” about any particular section or the article as a whole. What you are outlining, however, would also be considered “essentially narrative”, wouldn’t it? – SchroCat (talk) 15:27, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, not to the extent of unnecessarily waffling about the background to the siege as the lead section currently is. The fact that the two assailants are NOT mentioned in the lead is somewhat concerning though. J.Weir3 (talk) 15:29, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would utterly reject the description of the lead as providing “unnecessarily waffling about the background to the siege”: that just shows some basic ignorance about the subject matter. Unless you understand that this was a two-part event (the break in and murder of three policemen at the start and then the siege as the culmination of the manhunt) then ANY IB is going to be misleading dross. – SchroCat (talk) 15:50, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I clearly understand the background and 2-part nature of the incident, and your statement is just plain and simply rude and not necessary. It is however worth noting that the title of the article is ‘Siege of Sidney Street’. Readers who are not informed about the events may get confused and mix up details between the murders and the siege itself. This is why I think that the background and context should be featured (although with one or two sentences in the lead section) in its own section, as it is currently, rather than duplicated in the lead. I know there is probably no support for this, but to put it forward as an idea, the Houndsditch murders could be a separate page altogether. And before you take against this, that is a conceptual idea for arguments sake. J.Weir3 (talk) 16:07, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There’s nothing rude in what I’ve said. I’ve admitted further up the page that I’m ignorant about the events in other shootout articles, which is why I don’t try and force my opinion on subjects I don’t know about. What I’m seeing doesn’t give me much faith that you do—or rather did—grasp about the two stages. Your complaints about the lead don’t suggest you did, and the IB entirely ignored any aspect of it.Readers are informed: that’s what the lead paragraph does with its “unnecessarily waffling”.Could you identify where you think information is duplicated? I’ve read the lead through a couple of times and can’t see any duplication.And no: it’s not a sensible idea to split the cause and effect of these two highly connected concurrent events into two separate articles. – SchroCat (talk) 19:43, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I’m not averse to infoboxes in general, nor to an infobox on this article, but the one that was added contained little of value. It contained date and location which was reasonable; the map was actually helpful. Then a list of participants on both “sides”, which makes it look like the antagonists were an organised force and not two civilians; it equates civilian police forces with military units; it lists the fire brigade as a combatant; it lists the Royal Horse Artillery, who didn’t turn up until the incident was over; it lists the antagonists as KIA like they’re soldiers in a battle (which is too much for an infobox anyway). Then we have a “casualties” section that duplicates the section above on the right (and again is misleading about the nature of the “conflict”), and on the left lists a firefighter who died in an accident, with a long parenthetical note that goes into too much detail for an infobox. None of that helps the reader understand what actually happened. The only bit that is useful is the date and location. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:16, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for your constructive criticism, which has been well received. I agree that there were a number of issues with the infobox, and if it were to be reinstated there would be a number of changes to it. As you say, the date and location on a map is very valuable, and I also believe the image I used was more representative of the siege itself, rather than an image which in my opinion focusses on Churchill too much, to the extent of lessening the importance of the topic of the article, the siege. I am of the opinion that the two sides of the confrontation are valid (albeit with the removal of the LFB and RHA, which was an oversight on my behalf) but I can see where you are coming from with it coming across as too ‘military’. Maybe a better idea would be to introduce a Template:Infobox civilian attack infobox, which may be more structurally sound? If you’d like, I could form a draft one for people to preview/provide improvements? J.Weir3 (talk) 14:31, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Or Template:Infobox civil conflict. J.Weir3 (talk) 15:33, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think we have here a classic case of “Everyone’s out of step except me”: five peer reviewers, eight FAC reviewers and three editors on this page have not agreed with what JWeir3 is suggesting, but s/he insists that s/he is right. To quote Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken”. Tim riley talk 20:32, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]