Cla68 wrote:Moral Hazard wrote:KWW,
Please respond to discussions of your and Wehwalt's behavior regarding Natalee Holloway.
Welcome to Wikipediocracy, KWW. Now, what WAS the deal with you and the Natalee Holloway article?
Neutrality, perhaps? No one knows precisely what JvdS did that night: only a fool would think he was completely uninvolved, but we don't know whether his acts were passive or active, and, if active, precisely how active they were. What we do know is that the Aruban national police, the Kingdom's investigative services, private investigation services, American marines, Kingdom marines, and legions of TV reporters were never able to turn up sufficient evidence to even put him on trial. I've always suspected Paulus van der Sloot had a lot to do with that, but that, again, is something that no one knows. That means the article should never represent JvdS as a known murderer in that case.
Beth strikes me as a tragic figure: hard not to grieve for a woman in that position, but sympathy and grief aside, she did take on an entire country, accusing it of colluding with a murderer, and she eventually took it over the top (with Dr. Phil, CNN, and even the Lifetime Movie Network egging her on). Portraying her as a saint fighting corruption is unreasonable: closer to a woman so beset by grief that she lost all perspective. A substantial percentage of disappearances remain unsolved forever, and no amount of public pressure and fingerpointing will fix that. Aruba did spend over half its police budget for the year working on this case, and it's hard for me not to view that as a good faith effort on their part.
There are numerous other concerns that people have that always struck me as downright silly. No one searching for "Natalee Holloway" is interested in her high-school performance or her 4H participation: the only thing they are looking for is the story of her disappearance and the subsequent hullabaloo.
The bit about Beth's divorce was amazing to me: she got divorced in the middle of the story and changed her name, not to her maiden name, but to the name of her former husband, from whom she remained divorced. There was no implication from any source that she had gotten reinvolved with Dave Holloway, and the divorce was a no-fault divorce (which, in Alabama legalese, is a "complete incompatibility of temperament such that the parties can no longer live together"). So, to help make it clear that Beth's divorce and subsequent odd name change did not involve reinvolvement with Dave (and not committing the WP:OR sin of calling it a "no-fault divorce" when the source did not), the article listed the reason as the source did: a "complete incompatibility of temperament such that the parties can no longer live together". Some of the brain-trusts involved in Wikipedia decided that there must be some horrible reason we would use such language and kept trying to call it a BLP violation. Dealing with such people certainly strained my ability to live within the confines of WP:NPA.
As for my interest? It was a local news story for me, not something happening in a faraway land. The daily stories in the Antillianse Dagblad helped me practice my Dutch comprehension and gave me a counterpoint to the stories in the American press. Jan van der Straten, the Aruban police chief, eventually took over the police force on my island and did a commendable job there. The Aruban police may be a small island police force, but they weren't (and aren't) the Keystone Cops.
The fools that believe that I am in the employ of the Aruban government (or tourist association) are just that: fools.
Thanks for finally raising the courage to post, since you've been lurking for a while now, for reasons I suspect I accurately outlined elsewhere (thread locked, sorry) 
