1972 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts robbery (final version) received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which on 2 February 2025 was archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
A fact from 1972 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts robbery appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 September 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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The "largest theft" seems dubious or outdated to me. Firstly, this was a robbery and not a theft. Re-evaluations of the value of the artworks in their absence seems rather weak. The more recent Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, which was a theft (not a robbery), has more recent sourced statements of it being "the most valuable heist". – Reidgreg (talk) 02:50, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Stealing property, whatever the means, is theft. Robbery specifically refers to the kind of theft where it is stolen forcefully from another. All robbery is theft but not all theft is robbery. It doesn't matter if the $500 is taken from the liquor store's till by an employee skimming from the register over several weeks or an armed gang making the clerk take it out all at once right before closing.
"Re-evaluations of the value of the artworks in their absence seems rather weak" Maybe, but that's how the value of all stolen artwork is measured. See the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft (and note that title; it seems like all art theft is theft regardless of the method). Vermeer's The Concert, valued this way like all other stolen artwork, is at $250 million currently the world's most valuable stolen object.
The only cited source for the syrup theft being "the most valuable in Canadian history" is History101, a site that I had never heard of until reading this. They are not listed under WP:RSPS, but their about-us page sounds more like it's aimed at investors than, well, people evaluating its reliability as a source. It talks vaguely of "experts" yet says nothing about how it vets the information it publishes. The page on the syrup theft lists no independent sources.
This is a rather extraordinary claim—in fact, as a superlative, it is IMO the very definition of an extraordinary claim—that requires extraordinary proof, and to me this ain't it.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's another one I've worked on for a while that I see as potential GA material and I'd like feedback before making that nomination.
- why all the citations in the lead? Especially the multiple ones together. They're not verboten but they're also not strictly necessary, and this doesn't seem like such a wildly controversial topic where it would be. In any case even if you prefer them I think the four on the first sentence is a bit much
- I think the lead image is a poor choice but that may be personal preference. I think a better one would be, ideally, an image of the building in question at as close of a time to the heist as you can get it. If not oh well, I just think the image is misleading
- you should cite, somewhere, the list of paintings stolen. As is I can't see where you got this info from
- some of the language is odd and could benefit from a copyedit "One lead has not been so easy for Lacoursière to dismiss.", stuff like that, weirdly informal, reads more like a book than an encyclopedia article, and that isn't the only instance
Sorry to have taken such a long time to be able to get back to you on these things:
The cites in the lead were because I had submitted it to DYK and a number of the hooks were mentioned in the lede. They can certainly be removed, and I will be.
I do see your point about the image. At the time I put it there I thought it was one of the stolen paintings. I'm not sure about the building as a replacement; maybe if we can get a better image of one of the other paintings that was actually stolen (it happened so long ago that there are not many digital copies, if any) we could use it instead. Unlike the Gardner, the MMFA has avoided highlighting the void left by the stolen work.
Will do. It's one the sources used later in that section.
You're right; that's a little too flourish-y. Will see what else I can smooth out.
Cathy Sezgin, the blog's author, wrote the ARCA journal article on the theft and is cited elsewhere as an authority on it. I think therefore under WP:SPS she is "an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications" and thus we can use her blog posts as a source.
