Talk:Death of Ian Tomlinson

Featured articleDeath of Ian Tomlinson 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.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 31, 2010.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 28, 2010Featured article candidatePromoted
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 23, 2009.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the family of Ian Tomlinson thanked The Guardian for posting footage of an alleged assault on him?

Low-quality sourcing

As the article currently stands, it overwhelmingly uses primary sources that document coverage of the event as it took place. I'm not really seeing much secondary analysis, let alone something like scholarly analysis. As it stands, this article falls short of the minimum standard at WP:PRIMARY. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:11, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The extensive newspaper coverage is WP:SECONDARY. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:12, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But it's almost all contemporary reporting which is arguably primary (this is a subject of some debate) and not ideal for a featured article. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:38, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NEWSPRIMARY goes into when news media is a primary source and when it's secondary. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 17:24, 9 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Thebiguglyalien, HJ Mitchell, and Nomoskedasticity: Have these concerns been resolved? If not, should this go to WP:FAR? Z1720 (talk) 04:03, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced that this article can stand on its own, since it looks like the whole thing is a review of news coverage. I see a few high quality secondary sources that give it significant coverage (doi:10.1093/bjc/azr086 and doi:10.1093/bjc/azq033), so it still meets WP:Bare notability, but they're not in the article. And even if they were, most of the sources would still bring WP:PRIMARY concerns. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm more interested in police shootings specifically but this incident comes up a lot in sources discussing police use of force generally so it's definitely notable enough for an article of its own but the article would be a lot thinner if it weren't for the contemporary reporting. To be clear, I don't see a problem with using contemporary reporting to add meat to the bones and would not support an AfD or merge proposal, but I'm not sure this would pass FAC today. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I sort of agree, the analysis mostly seems to be what was reported on at the time and in what order, as opposed to what actually happened as we know it now.
Also without putting too fine a point on it, it reads almost like a plug piece for the Guardian and the Observer (The Guardian's sister paper)... I find it interesting that any reference to the Guardian and Observer are properly formatted but other news outlets aren't for instance. ~2025-33548-11 (talk) 13:11, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]