Talk:Crystal Mangum

Edit request from Datakid1100, 15 May 2010

{{editprotected}} Can you fix this Double Redirect: Crystal Mangum →‎ Duke University students rape accusation case →‎ Duke lacrosse case Datakid1100 (talk) 08:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 08:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

"African-American woman"

Is there some reason this article leads with describing Mangum as an "African-American woman" instead of "American woman" or something else? My apologies if this discussion has already occurred; I have not found it. DB Durham NC (talk) 20:56, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know of past discussions, but I think in this case it is appropriate to mention her race, as race was a central issue in the Duke rape case which gave rise to her notability in the first place. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:39, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Rreagan007. Her race, in the context of the Duke rape allegations, is part of what made Mangum notable. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 00:58, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, but it looks strange the way it is now since the reader may not know that fact. Can we add some explanation later in that sentence, such as "...false allegations of rape against white lacrosse players in the racially-charged Duke lacrosse case"? DB Durham NC (talk) 01:46, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Very good suggestion. Done. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:28, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Putting the racial issue in context is an improvement. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the (unreferenced) mentions of race from the lead, since the article about the Duke lacrosse case does not address any race issues in the lead, and only in passing in the article. As such, it appears out of context and proportion to lead the article with a mention of skin color. If that characteristic is defining for her notability, it should emerge clearly (and with sources) from the article why that is so.  Sandstein  21:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I still don't understand - why does the article lead with her being African-American? It's not only out of context, it borders on a prejudicing read of what should be straightforward. I can cite more than a few other female murderers on Wikipedia who do not lead with "is a white woman who was charged with..."

Because caucasians comprise 73% of the American population. Mangum is a member of a visible minority, and this is an encyclopedia article about her. Ergo, it's worth mentioning. Mike Helms (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

The correct answer is already listed above. Mangum's race (and gender) were the reasons the Group of 88 and others believed her, and the race and gender of her victims at Duke were central to why they were denied due process. Without these dynamics then the scandal wouldn't have happened. Her race isn't "worth" mentioning, it's of vital significance and that's why its in the lede. It's wrong to consider this article as being primarily about Crystal Mangum as a murderer, thousands of women kill their partners and they don't get Wikipedia articles, that's not usually a notable occurrence in itself. This article is about Crystal Mangum as the Duke false accuser who then also finally cemented her notability beyond any doubt by later going on to murder her partner.--Shakehandsman (talk) 23:27, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

On reflection, some of the above is not clear from this article and I can therefore appreciate why the question was asked. Hopefully we can improve the article to cover the issues more clearly.--Shakehandsman (talk) 04:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I just came across the article and the language jumped out at me as problematic as well. In fact, it's why I came over here to the talk page, to see if others had taken issue with it - looks like it has. Mixed feelings about this - I don't like the fact that her descriptor pretty much just comes down to her race and gender. On the other hand, the language in the lead on the Trayvon Martin article is similar, so perhaps there's precedent. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 05:36, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Redirect to Duke Lacross case

WP:BRD @Weirvile: Per BLP policy, her notability stems from a single event. The other stuff in the bio is largely NN news. She's low-profile and keeping a separate BLP on her is unnecessarily. There is nothing encyclopedic in this article that is not covered in the Duke lacross article. It appears that this exists only to report negative information. Per WP:ONEEVENT, the main event was largely news and her role is adequately covered in that article. Weirvile gave no edit summary for revert. --DHeyward (talk) 09:24, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. Her subsequent criminal acts are enough to make her independently notable, and her back story has been important in debates about the case and about her patterns of behaviour. The decision to unlock the article (formerly protected as a redirect) was made by User:Wehwalt in 2011 [1]. Weirvile's undo was entirely proper given your very high-handed act, performed with no discussion. The fact that the information about her is (largely) "negative" is irrelevant. That's true of most biographies of people who are notable for criminal acts. Nor is the fact that it has been "news". Everything that happens is "news". WP:NOTNEWS is not a guideline for excluding all news! It's also about when to include material reported in the news. Paul B (talk) 10:13, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Please read the BLP policy specifically about WP:BRD and redirects and comment on content. I'm curious as to how an after-the-fact crime was relevant to a case that was already decided. I find it problematic to maintain a biography that exists largely to show a "pattern of behaviour" that is only to reinforce negative opinions. The murder charge and conviction was news, not an event and she is only known for the single event. The murder conviction can even be added to the event page as a followup. A purely "look how bad she is" article has no place here. See WP:PSEUDO --DHeyward (talk) 13:12, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I do hate it when editors say "Please read" WP:XYX" without actually making whatever they think is the relevant point. It's useless. Please don't scatter alphabetti spaghetti around unless you have some meaningful point to make. And what does "comment on content" mean? Another familiar WP catch-phrase apparently thrown in to no purpose. You raised behaviour issues, not me. I referred to your actions. "I find it problematic to maintain a biography that exists largely to show a 'pattern of behaviour' that is only to reinforce negative opinions." I find it irrelevant that you find it problematic. Do you think the biography of Al Capone should be deleted because it reinforces negative opinions about him? Are you going to say "a purely 'look how bad he was' article has no place here." That's a novel viewpoint. To say a murder and conviction is "news not an event" is to use the English language in way that seems to exist in some sort of parallel universe. News is about events. When it isn't, it's fiction. If you think Ms Mangum's numerous good deeds should be added, source them and add them. And why don't you read WP:PSEUDO. It clear that biographies are legitimate "if the person themselves received substantial coverage under their own name". Paul B (talk) 15:20, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

I hate editors that don't know enough about process, yet snark when the process is pointed out and don't read it. The relevant point is that it says to boldly create a redirect and talk if it's reverted. It's not "high-handed" as you put so please discuss the content of the discussion, which I created after the revert per the policy. Go learn it before you snark up ignorance about it. And WP:PSEUDO says that BLPs must be balanced that include other events in her life. The coverage generated by her murder trial was strictly due to the Duke incident. For your reasoning, Al Capone had significant, multiple events and his article is more balanced than this one. He also is the subject of biographical works that assert notability of his personality, beyond the events. There is very little encyclopedic information about this person except the Duke Lacross incident. That's not very difficult to put in context with WP:PSEUDO. No one heard of her before the Lacross incident and the Lacross incident was mentioned every time after to remind people why she is in the news as second-degree murderers are very common and not in encyclopedias. That's called a "red flag" that she is notable for only WP:ONEEVENT. --DHeyward (talk) 18:48, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

"don't read it?" I've read WP:BRD, of course. No one has violated it (and btw, it's a guideline, not a policy), so throwing in the link was meaningless for the reasons I have already given. It appears that you are the one who doesn't know enough about process, yet snark when the process is pointed out. BTW the phrase "snark up ignorance" is both ignorant in itself and nonsensical. Also, may I remind you that when you spout bile about ignorance of policy, you are implicitly accusing other editors, most notably User:Wehwalt, an administrator of enormous experience, of such ignorance when he unlocked the page in 2011 and created the biography.
Of course Mangum is not as notable as Capone. That was not even the issue my analogy addressed, (as you well know), however, the question is whether she is notable enough. Perhaps I should send you off to read WP:GNG, but perhaps we can give up on the tit-for-tat alphabet soup. A person can become known for one event, but then become independently notable on the back of it. It happens all the time. We have numerous biographies of criminals who are known for one crime. The Shooting of Trayvon Martin has spawned articles on Martin himself and his killer George Zimmerman. The latter became notable because of the single incident, but his notability as an individual developed from that basis. Same for, say, John and Lorena Bobbitt, Des Warren, and a host of other people. We have articles on every victim of Jack the Ripper - people notable only for being killed - simply because there has been extensive discussion and speculation about them. Timothy McVeigh, Mark David Chapman and John Hinkley are known for one thing only, but all have a biographical articles. The latter is specifically mentioned in WP:BLP1E, the passage of policy I suspect you meant to link to.
If you think the article is unbalanced you have the opportunity to balance it. There are sources on her life. I have already used them to create as rounded a picture as I can. Paul B (talk) 12:55, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

As long as you agree that a redirect was not "high handed" and is exactly what policy says to do for BLP's, I am not accusing anyone of anything except pointing out your uncivil AGF violations. I have no issue with your content arguments. BLP1E is policy. ONEEVENT is a notability guideline, PSUEDO is an essay. I chose the the references carefully and no, I didn't mean BLP1E when I wrote ONEEVENT. ONEEVENT speaks to her notability which is never asserted without reference to Duke Lacross accusation. Her murder trial made news because of that event. Everything else about her life is made known through that event. She was not charged or convicted of any crime with respect to the Duke Lacross case. Half of the titles for sources regarding her subsequent newsmaking activity don't even use her name, rather "Duke Lacross accuser" or similar. --DHeyward (talk) 21:27, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I also disagree. Events she has been involved in after the Duke lacrosse case make her notable, particularly the murder trial which was covered extensively in N.C. media. Ncjon (talk) 11:59, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Image

I had pulled an image from another site but the change was reversed. Why was the change reversed and why is there not an image yet on this article? Link to Diff of change request

Alastor Moody (talk) 01:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I can't speak to why the other editor removed it, but when I went to the linked image you put in that URL a minute ago, I got a 404 error. If you think that a photo should be added, it would perhaps be better to pull one that is clearly in the public domain, i.e. her most recent photo from NC's Dept. of Adult Corrections, and upload it to Wikipedia, rather than some third-party site where there's less certainty about whether or not a particular image is in the public domain and available for use on Wikipedia. Just some thoughts. Ncjon (talk) 02:59, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Redirect in the 1s Line of Bio to 'False Allegations of Rape'

The talk page demonstrates some clear neutrality issues on this bio - she is a part of a very politicized case of institutional failure [legal misconduct, university response] etc. I am troubled that in a notable article it links immediately to False Allegations of Rape when there is no citation of legal judgment of this - the young men she accused were not exonerated by a court nor was Ms Mangum charged with any perjury or false report crimes. Directing to 'False Allegations of Rape' unnecessarily biases the article without context in a way that it cannot recover - the dropping of charges and the decision not to pursue the case by the NC Attorney General are all adequately accounted [and cited] here in her bio as well as in the expanded Duke Lacrosse 2006 Rape Case page. As this proposed change has been reverted, I thought it best to take this question to talk in order to better ascertain why this link is necessary (and so prominent) in the biography. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Potentate4 (talk • contribs) 19:02, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

There was a thorough investigation that didn't just result in dropping the charges against the men Mangum accused of rape, but in the unusual step of declaring the three men innocent. The only reason no charges were brought against Mangum is that the prosecutor thought she might believe some of the lies she told. I recommend that you read the news transcript linked to by footnote 6 in the article. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 21:33, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I recommend that before you change the Wiki page, you understand that by stating "she falsely accused them", you are in fact making a false claim. I will be changing this back. Luhuio (talk) 03:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

And I recommend that you read more carefully. The article says Mangum is "best known for making false allegations of rape against lacrosse players", not that "she falsely accused them". — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:50, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Multiple users have edited this strikingly biased introduction to this article, and Malik Shabazz keeps changing these edits back. This was a very controversial case, and there is no consensus on what happened back at that party in 2006. It's true that the attorney general took an unusual step in declaring that the three men were "innocent," but there are other accounts that cast considerably more doubt on what happened. William D. Cohan, author of The Price of Silence, writes, in a review of the ESPN documentary Fantastic Lies, "Fantastic Lies presents the narrative that the parents of the indicted players and their defense attorneys have been busily trying to preserve in amber for years: that the players were falsely accused, and that the Durham police, aided and abetted by Nifong, the rape nurse, and the media created an epic conflagration. Instead of grappling with why there never was a trial and how the North Carolina State Bar was used to subvert justice, the film once again spews the defense version that justice was served, even though it was not, and that no amount of money, not even $20 million, could ever compensate the three players for what Mangum and Nifong did to them. We’ll never know what really happened in that that bathroom 10 years ago, and the house itself has long since been torn down."

Malik Shabazz, I know you are familiar with Cohan, since you are also one of the main editors on the Wikipedia page for his book. The fact is that you keep curating the Wikipedia article (and other related ones) to preserve this same narrative.

I am not a frequent editor of Wikipedia, so I am unfamiliar with the process for submitting entries with ongoing controversies for some kind of dispute resolution, but this seems like it ought to be easy. Just give a little more context and a less biased intro instead of leading with the idea that there's a consensus on false allegations when there isn't. Kod65red (talk) 17:41, 25 August 2018 (UTC)kod65red

References

Also, your response to Luhuio above, that she was ' "best known for making false allegations of rape against lacrosse players", not that "she falsely accused them" ' is a distinction without a difference. Kod65red (talk) 17:46, 25 August 2018 (UTC)kod65red

It is our role as Wikipedia editors to summarize what reliable sources say about a subject. In this instance, there is near unanimity that it was a false accusation of rape. (If you think I'm mistaken, and a different view of the case is developing among scholars and historians, please cite some reliable sources so we can update the encyclopedia.) It's ironic that you cited Cohan's review at Vanity Fair. While I was reading it, a pop-up invited me to read his interview of Ryan McFadyen, a member of the lacrosse team. The introduction to the interview (almost certainly written by a Vanity Fair editor and not Cohan) starts "When three Duke University lacrosse players were falsely accused of rape".

The fact that several new or unregistered editors have objected to the use of the phrase doesn't sway me. If you look at the article's history, you'll see that more than a few new and unregistered editors also try to change the first sentence of the article to describe Mangum as a "convicted murderer" instead of a woman. I'm not swayed by them either.

If you want to ask other editors what they think, consider starting a request for comments or pursuing some other form of dispute resolution. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 19:04, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate you informing me about the process for dispute resolution. I may submit this article at some point or work on some changes in the sandbox. I've looked around a bit, and it seems like Cohan is the main writer or journalist who has been speaking out about the case recently and calling into question the "false accusation" narrative. I think he is reliable, but he's only one source, so I will keep my eyes open for additional sources. Not a lot of sources have been revisiting this case. #MeToo has caused a lot of re-evaluation of sexual assault and rape cases. It seems very likely to me that if and when historians or journalists look back at this case, at least the clear and conclusive version of the false accusation narrative will be increasingly called into question, especially given the resources that the accused put into defending their reputations and shifting kinds of political expediency that surrounded the later "rush to undo" the original "rush to judgment." That supposition is of course my interpretation, and it doesn't belong in the Wikipedia entry, either.

In the meantime, we're stuck with a very biased entry that captures a snapshot of opinion about the case at a particular moment, a snapshot that alt-right political interests have a vested interest in reinforcing . It wouldn't take much to change this to something more neutral. Have any Wikipedia editors who have been working on #MeToo and sexual assault cases (if that is an assignment) looked at this? — Kod65red (talk) 15:13, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

References

I agree with you. Recently, for example, we saw a very quick re-evaluation of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. I never understood why Clinton kept the genuine support of so many liberals and feminists when a corporate CEO caught in a similar situation would have been forced to resign, and I knew history would judge him—and his contemporaries—harshly for what happened. Still, it was surprising to see the re-evaluation take hold so swiftly.

You may want to post a message at the Gender gap task force and ask what some of the editors there think. This article, like other articles about the Duke case, was mostly written by Duke alumni and other advocates for the players. (And like almost all articles on Wikipedia, it was mostly written by white men.) I've fought for 11 years or so to try to keep it as neutral as the sources allow. As I wrote, if historians are taking a different view than they did a decade ago, we need to update the article to reflect that. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:32, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

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Why

user:MShabazz Why? There is no reason to remove. She is murderer. 2600:1012:B00D:9DF7:E816:D488:7DC2:417A (talk) 20:54, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Please see WP:BLP and WP:NPOV. We don't start biographies, even of dead mass murderers and terrorists, like that. See, for example, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:28, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

user:MShabazz ok good enough for me. Thank you for answering. 2602:301:772D:62D0:F826:63F0:2E9D:FDED (talk) 00:12, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Bad phrasing in Duke lacrosse section

"District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was up for re-election, pursued the case despite questions about the credibility of Mangum, and conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence that failed to demonstrate that Mangum had been raped by the Duke lacrosse players."

That last part, "...withhold exculpatory evidence that failed to demonstrate that Mangum had been raped by the Duke lacrosse players.", is awkwardly written and possibly misrepresents the seriousness of Nifong's actions. Failed to demonstrate could be misunderstood to mean "inconclusive". Nifong was disbarred and jailed because he conspired with a DNA lab director to withhold evidence that would have cleared the players of the charges. Which is what exculpatory evidence is.

It would be better to just delete the last part and end the sentence "...and conspired to withhold exculpatory evidence."

I have chosen to word it similarly to the intro at Nifong's page: "...and conspired with a DNA lab director to withhold exculpatory evidence that would have cleared the lacrosse players of the rape accusations." A bit redundant, but states it more clearly I think. --DB1729 (talk) 03:43, 12 December 2019 (UTC)