Talk:Infanticide

	NOTICE, please do not remove from top of page.
	I no longer edit in Wikipedia. I am starting this article with the many sections, sentences and a hundred references that I added last year in the Wikipedia “Infanticide” article. I omitted the sections and references of the other Wikipedia authors.
	Cesar Tort 11:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

How can I edit the lead?

Just noticed that the sentence--:

Infant abandonment occurs in modern societies.[1] Abandonments put infants at risk of becoming the indirect victims of infanticide. Abandoned infants are essentially orphans and many receive care through orphanages or adoption.

--belongs to a section way below the article. But I don't know how to edit it from the lead in CZ (to relocate it properly). Cesar Tort 15:51, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll be happy to move this, but I'm not sure where to put it. Given the [1] in it, is it a note?

In the meantime, I'm going to create metadata for you, with some tentative workgroup assignments (Sociology, Law, Health Sciences) that certainly can change. Also, I'll look over the article for purely CZ formatting/text conventions.

By clicking the tabs on the top of the pages, you'll see Related Articles (where I moved "see also") and External Links. Related Articles is just a start, but we find it extremely useful, and something quite different from WP.

I assumed American English, but, since you refer to UK law, did you want the language variant to be British English?

In passing, one thing that annoyed me no end until I found that CZ and WP are different on footnotes. (I'm going to use a convention here to let me display some formatting commands on the talk page)

In WP, you can put in a footnote <ref name=Gomez /> before the full citation with <ref name=Gomez>{{citation | author = M. Gomez}}</ref>. In CZ, the full inline citation must exist before you have any short references to it.

Howard C. Berkowitz 22:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Got it. I think the above sentence should be relocated just below the heading "Present day". --Cesar Tort 12:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

First, just mechanically and you may know this: for moving text from any section or the, click on the edit for the whole page, which is at the top right, rather than on a section edit.

Moving it now. I was going to extend the bibliographic citation of http://http://meero.worldvision.org/issue_details.php?issueID=10, but the link is dead; it goes to a domain seller. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:13, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

You can remove both if you like: unsourced statement and dead source. That sentence/source was added in Wikipedia on 11 November 2008: exactly the day I gave up editing there. I shouldn't have added it to this article since I try to add here only the sentences I contributed to the Wikipedia article (as suggested by CZ policies if Ihave understood them correctly). --Cesar Tort 12:25, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

We are more flexible about sourcing here than Wikipedia. If a statement is well accepted by mainstream authority in the field, it doesn't need sourcing; that's a judgment call. More controversial matters do need sourcing, but — this is a style that CZ people develop over time — a degree of original synthesis is fine although original research is not.

New heading to link to Talk: Satanic ritual abuse

Added new heading so it could be linked to Satanic ritual abuse; perhaps some of this text should be copied there or at least linked. I'll leave it to Constables whether to move, as that affects the revision history. Reset indentation to fit new heading. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:30, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Just as a suggestion, I think your statement about current infanticide is quite reasonable. Offhand, I can think of 2-3 abandonments, one on New Zealand Air (e.g., [1] the last week or so. In the U.S., there are more and more local laws and facilities for safely and anonymously depositing a baby who might otherwise be abandoned; there has been recent news reporting about pleas that these cannot handle older children, often directed to parents caught in economic crisis. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:42, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's a "Child abandonment" article in Wikipedia. It's distinct from exposure and infanticide, both of which generally kill the infant. If you relocate the above sentence to a more suitable place I guess it should be removed from the lead? --Cesar Tort 12:51, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I see your point. Just thinking...is there a good generic term that could serve as a top-level for all of these? It's culturally challenging, if a particular culture doesn't regard even extreme abandonment as infanticide, merely the will of the heavens if the child does not live. Of course, this begins to touch on all the abortion, euthanasia, and things that get really touchy. You might want to look at futile care, which touches on these. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

The article is basically made of sentences based upon sources. My view about the subject is that child sacrifice, which sometimes goes with the canibalization of the infant (as was done by Indians in my town before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors) was the most barbaric. Greek and Roman exposure in the ancient world was less barbaric. Then we have abortion in our times. Euthanasia is quite different and I support it. --Cesar Tort 13:39, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, we certainly don't want to get into trying to find the Right Answer about abortion; eventually some of that really is faith-based (not meant nastily). As an aside, though, it's interesting to try to understand the rationale for human sacrifice in various belief systems. This is one of my problems with alleging it as a widespread Satanic practice; a good deal of known sacrifice, including ritual cannibalism of warriors or sacrificing kings to the land, dealt with transfer of power from people who had it.

You are, however, touching on a CZ-WP difference. While we try to be careful about attributions not generally accepted by experts, with feedback from our own, not having to have a source for every sentence — using other methods for accuracy — often makes for much more flowing writing. As you well know, a person with an agenda can source everything, but with biased sources. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:20, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes: that was one of my problems with Wikipedia. So-called reliable sources are often unreliable. In this case however (Child sacrifice vs. Satanic Ritual Abuse) my personal view is that sources are important since all authors who believe in the reality of it belong to the fringe and the "psycho-therapeutic" professions, not to the mainstream of sociology and criminology, which is overwhelmingly skeptical. In fact, whereas there are tons of evidence of child sacrifice through history and even prehistory, there's no forensic evidence for so-called Satanic Ritual Abuse. Cesar Tort 14:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

There are legal cases and articles that show there has been forensic evidence, such as those on the Satanic ritual abuse talk page. Those professionals that have first hand experience with survivors of ritual abuse would likely have more knowledge of the field than others. And published sociologists like Kent and criminologists like Pepinsky would disagree with your statements above.Neil Brick 23:43, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a fact, not an opinion, that presently most sociologists and criminologists consider it the iconic paradigm of moral panic. The Wikipedia debate, which is over now (skeptics won it because of the policy of “reliable sources”), was useful since it demonstrates that only in the fringes psychotherapy dissociative patients and some of their shrinks believe in it. Psychotherapy, of course, can provide zero forensic evidence. As the headperson of CSI Las Vegas said: "I don't believe you [the patients' claims], I believe the evidence" :) Cesar Tort 11:46, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps some of this should move to Talk: Satanic ritual abuse. I'm putting a link on that talk page. This is getting into challenging interdisciplinary issues; there are all manner of top-level articles that touch on topics in this article as well as others, some not written. The distinctions, for example, among infanticide, exposure (needs disambiguation), etc., are important. Ritual abuse is clearly not limited to children and not limited to one belief system. The issue of moral panic has been mentioned. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:30, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm OK with the moving. Since they're mythical, satanic rituals are not mentioned in the scholarly infanticide literature. Exposure on the other hand is a legitimate subcategory of infanticide, as can be seen in the present article. Cesar Tort 18:33, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

(undent) I'm going to leave the mechanics of moving to a Constable/Editor call. While infanticide is fairly clearly child abuse in modern society, it clearly was acceptable in some cultures — there should, however, probably be a link to the child abuse article. Perhaps, if infanticide or exposure was culturally defined, to ritual abuse, with due regard that ritual abuse is not limited to children. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:42, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

In these awful "cultural relativist" times, there are only a handful of scholars who regard both infanticide and exposure in, say, tribal societies as child abuse. One of them is Lloyd deMause. By the way, is it OK here to link articles to Wikipedia, as I have been doing? Cesar Tort 18:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I think I'm speaking here as a Constable now -- it's fine to link to WP in Talk pages, as you did above, but it is absolutely unacceptable to link to WP for any reason within an article. Just as you may NOT cite WP as a source for any citation within an article. Sure, you can find a source (reference, ie, NYT, July 31, Sunday Magazine, Frank Rich) that backs up a statement in a WP article, and you can use that same source here in OUR article, but you CANNOT just link to that source via Wikipedia. It has to be independently recreated. Hayford Peirce 19:03, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with moving this to Talk: Satanic ritual abuse if this is what is decided by the Constables. Looking at the wikipedia article you mentioned at the Satanic ritual abuse talk page, it is hard to believe there was a debate. The page pretty much presents only one point of view. Victim accounts are evidence. They are allowed in court. Of course, there is forensic evidence of Satanic ritual abuse in certain legal cases as well.Neil Brick 18:58, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry but the "victims" claims do not account for evidence in court nowadays, not since the phenomenon was discredited in the late 1990s. Also, there was indeed an extremely long debate at Wikipedia, as you can see in the seven archived talk pages, starting from here to the current talk page. Cesar Tort 23:47, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Victim claims of crimes do account for evidence, as was seen in the Hammond, LA case. Certain news accounts did mention Satanic rituals connected to these crimes. Though some believe the phenomenon was discredited and though the majority of literature was published in the 1990's on this topic, some are still publishing evidence and accounts of these crimes.Neil Brick 02:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)