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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
A request for uninvolved close is pending at WP:ANRFC. ― Mandruss ☎ 22:31, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Should the article include a list of the deceased victims' names? 11:59, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
There appears to be some confusion regarding naming the victims. WP:NOTMEMORIAL is clear that articles for non-notable subjects is against policy, but it doesn't seem to take a position on whether or not they can be included in the article body itself. There was an attempt to codify restricting their addition altogether a couple of years ago, but that attempt failed to gain community consensus. I've added the victim names as well as a reliable source/ref for that specific aspect. If someone finds a better source for other details (specifically, age of the victims), feel free to replace/add to the refs. All that said: if there is a compelling reason to not include the victims, I'm open to being convinced. — Locke Cole • t • c 05:57, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Why include the name of the perpetrator then?As I said above, the factors and arguments are always the same. Your question has been asked and answered numerous times in discussions at previous articles. Somebody else may feel like rehashing that yet again here; I don't. ― Mandruss ☎ 10:14, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
"the factors and arguments are always the same"but that isn't at all true. It would be more correct to say the factors are always different. Is a shooting at music venue the same as a shooting at a workplace? You certainly don't know that the factors pertaining to one incident apply to what may superficially seem to be a similar incident. We write separate articles because we assume each article is on a separate topic. Bus stop ( talk) 16:48, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
"Then why include the shooter's name?" is childish false equivalence and slippery slope; the perpetrator is always and automatically not indiscriminate to include in the article on a notable crime, and the article may focus entire sections on that person and their background. But a bunch of non-notable victims may well be indiscriminate to include, and would not dwell on them or have section on them. They are not comparable. Next, "one was at work and one at a concert" being taken to mean "factors and arguments are different" in this context is the fallacy of equivocation, here substituting the obvious meaning "encyclopedically relevant factor that could affect whether a name-list is appropriate" with "any factor whatsoever, just so I can say they're different and hope people will fall for my Jedi mind trick". In point of fact, a concert and jobsite mass shooting of these sorts are precisely the same from a WP perspective: a bunch of non-notable people died. It's only going to be a different factor that we care about for this kind of analysis producing a different actually on-topic argument about this question when non-notable people are killed. A mass-shooting in the New Zealand Parliament would obviously be a good case for a name list and perhaps some additional information on the victims besides names, because parliamentarians are notable. But no special case can be made for a list because it was a school versus a restaurant versus a bus stop versus a political rally, if no one died but random people with no non-local news coverage other than having been killed. I've decided to support including the list, for consistency with a larger number of articles on such events, but the question overall cannot be settled with bogus hand-waving like what you've offered. You're doing more harm than good to the keep argument when you engage in such tactics.
"This always seems to come up and the answer is always not to include victim lists."No, that is incorrect. See here. By my estimation victim lists are included about 90% of the time. Bus stop ( talk) 04:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
"the factors and arguments are always the same". I think the factors are different, or at least that is the assumption I have. Are you really engaging in this discussion? Bus stop ( talk) 16:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
"most coverage seems to NOT name the victims". I was asking you why that should matter? Even if every source does not contain the information, does that constitute a reason to omit the information? Isn't it standard practice to assemble an article by deriving material from multiple sources? And the reason I posted
"a bit out of time-order"was because I did not know that I could ping you when I posted the first time due to the fact that your User page has not been initiated. My mistake. So I then posted a second time with the ping included. Bus stop ( talk) 07:01, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"when most external web items do not give names then DUE indicates that WP should not"Markbassett—we commonly assemble articles from multiple sources. All of the sources used do not necessarily contain all of the information necessary to assemble an article. We don't automatically exclude information that is only found in some of the sources or even a minority of the sources. It is certainly my contention that the names of the deceased are pertinent to the subject of this article. We can have a conversation, but that is reliant on your participation. As I've asked you before—why do you want to exclude this information from this article? There is no need to invoke WP:ONUS or any other policy. I am a reasonable person. I am inclined to engage in friendly conversation. Just pretend that we were sitting on barstools or in any comfy setting. This is a simple and conversational question: why do you want to omit the names of the deceased from the article? Bus stop ( talk) 13:28, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Polling may be divisive and cause factionalism. While a poll may occasionally make it a lot easier for people to find a mutually agreeable position, in other cases it can undermine discussion and discourse. In the worst case, polls might cause participants not to civilly engage with the other voters, but merely instead to choose camps. By polarizing discussion and raising the stakes, polls may contribute to a breakdown in civility, making discussion of controversial issues extremely acrimonious. This makes it difficult for participants to assume good faith. In many cases, simple discussion might be better at encouraging careful consideration, dissection and eventual synthesis of each side's arguments than a poll would.Also, threats on my talk page are unwelcome. Please, if you really think you can make a case at WP:AN/I, don't waste time coming to my talk page, go make your case and then leave the mandatory notification on my talk page. Thanks! — Locke Cole • t • c 16:24, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
We provide specifics because there is value in specifics. That value does not have to be justified. The burden is not on me to explain how a specific helps a reader to understand the subject of an article. And inarguably the people who died in an incident are not so peripheral to the incident that their names do not even warrant inclusion. We include other proper names so what is the great problem that you perceive in naming the deceased? Bus stop ( talk) 17:15, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
Changed to support, per discussion below. Since a supermajority of similar articles (after lots and lots of similar discussion) contain such lists, there should be a genuinely compelling reason to do it differently here, or it confuses readers (and editors for that matter) into thinking the article is faulty. I'd be opposed to using a fancy list for this, or a whole section for it, per NOTMEMORIAL; just use an inline list in a sentence, following an introductory phrase and a colon, and do not go into details about them (age, gender, occupation, yadda yadda).
Update: A footnote would be even better. The victims were not specifically targeted because of who they are or what roles they play or what demographics they fit, and they are non-notable, so their names and occupations and ages and so on are not encyclopedically relevant in the main prose.
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SMcCandlish
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SMcCandlish
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05:19, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
This is the area of crime writing. I think most of you objecting to the mention of victim names really don't like the fact that this project covers the area of crime-writing. I think you find it scandalous and gossipy and tawdry and too gritty for your refined tastes. So, to take a swipe at an area that you do not like anyway, you figure you will lop off the "head" of the article, as it were, because in a certain figurative sense, the victims are the head(s) of these articles. The simple fact is that the victims, however randomly-chosen they may have been, become the basis of a story that is reported with a high degree of thoroughness in reliable sources.
To write about a crime, you do not say that a person was killed, rather you name the person that was killed. I think it is somewhat humorous that you all are deluding yourselves into thinking that you write about a death in an article about a crime and you only say that a male of 32 years old who was an accountant was killed. That is a contrivance. Every reader would perceive that as a contrivance. A name is a "handle" by which one comes to grip with who it was that died. The ending of life is too stark a notion to be relegated to generalities. And the very basis of these articles are the endings of lives in these incidents. We don't have to look to other articles to see that this article should be listing victim names. You all could do the project a favor and stop your crusade against articles that report on crimes and other tragedies. This is a legitimate area of Wikipedia. Perhaps you could take your crusading ways to another area of the project. Have you considered making Wikipedia's coverage of pornography sex-free? That might be a good next project for you to consider.
Bus stop (
talk)
14:21, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
"understanding the lives of the victims"? I never said anything like that and presumably you are responding to me. Bus stop ( talk) 15:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.It is an accepted tradition, as you can see by the fact that 90% of articles of this type include a list of victims in them. WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS has absolutely no relevance here, and it seems you just like the shortcut name, as the linked page adds nothing to this discussion. As to your other comments, thank you for the personal attacks! I look forward to your well reasoned objections, and not just a bunch of WP jargon tossed out hoping I'd ignore the fact that, at the end of all your talking, you never actually addressed my argument. =) — Locke Cole • t • c 05:25, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
@ SMcCandlish: Repeated attempts to establish a default, include or omit, have failed to reach consensus; the mantra is generally that this needs case-by-case evaluation. Case-by-case evaluation means inconsistency between articles, or it wouldn't be needed. So your comment conflicts with the current community view. ― Mandruss ☎ 04:13, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"when it gets to the point that, say, 75% or so of cases are one way rather than the other..."You participated in this thread. If you look at the lists I and others have compiled I think you will agree that roughly 90% of articles meeting reasonable criteria for consideration contain all victim names. Bus stop ( talk) 05:35, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
If we're already almost always including the names of the deceased in articles like this – despite some heated but reasoned objection – then that really should be a guideline (since there obviously is recurrent strife, but it's not having any effect on the amount of articles with these lists in them). If the community to date has been unwilling to codify it, it's because the idea was proposed poorly (without stats – until someone else provided them, incompletely and very late into the thread – and without making it clear that we're simply establishing a default, in a guideline (to which exceptions may sometimes apply, as always), not writing an immutable policy. Or, in some cases, it's because a tiny handful of editors have pulled off a WP:FAITACCOMPLI and the community doesn't agree with it. I don't think the latter is really likely; in the cases I can think of, there was already a general principle settled by consensus that the "accompliteers" were defying with a topically specific variance of their own devising. That's not the case here. We don't have a codified rule that gets anywhere near this, so there's nothing for a WP:FACTION to be defying.
Immediately below the last
WP:VPPOL RfC about this list-o'-the-dead matter is
another RfC that illustrates how to take a "we haven't settled on this in 10 years yet" matter and actually get it settled. It requires studious neutrality, and it helps to provide an index of past discussion, and a summary of pro/con arguments that is actually fair, and a reason to settle it. As the opener of that, I even refused to !vote in it. That said, I concur that re-RfCing the list-of-mass-death-names stuff would not go over well this soon after the last one. Give it a year. PS: I say all the above (which sounds rather pro-inclusion) despite personally feeling exclusionist about it, because the roughly 90% rate of inclusion tells me that my preference doesn't comport with the operational consensus, even if the community is loath to make it a codified one. WP teaches one to divorce subjective preference from objective observation of community norms (and politics).
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SMcCandlish
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10:21, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"personally feeling exclusionist about it"? Bus stop ( talk) 16:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"A compromise position is also possible: Put them in a footnote for the sake of completeness + sensitivity to relevance, instead of in the main body prose. Make a template for it, even."Please explain to me how on the one hand we can say that the inclusion of the names constitutes memorialization and on the other hand say that the inclusion of the names in the body of the article is somehow at odds with issues of
"sensitivity". Wouldn't it be one way or the other? Memorialization is something that is done with sensitivity; that is the only way it is done. As I touched upon in my first post, immediately above, the mere mention of the name of a decedent is the most minimal form of memorialization. Policy actually does not say that we can't memorialize the deceased. It simply is not done. It is not in our DNA to wax eloquent and sentimentally about a decedent. Doing so would be anathema to the Wikipedia culture. I looked at many of these articles. I did not see one instance of anything I could consider memorialization. Everybody who edits Wikipedia knows better than to attempt to introduce a eulogy into an article on a tragic incident such as this one. In all instances the information on the deceased is limited to a few rudimentary facts: name, age, gender, occupation, home town. This is not excessive as concerns memorialization and I don't think this runs counter to issues of sensitivity. Bus stop ( talk) 00:23, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
PS: Your view that MEMORIAL cannot pertain to in-article content is not borne out; it is routinely cited and acted upon to remove content and to cause revision to the tone of content. It may not focus on this, but there is no question at all that the community accepts the broader interpretation. That whole section of WP:NOT (more often cited as WP:NOTWEBHOST) is in fact not constrained even in its explicit wording to the whole-page level, anyway, but also addresses in-page content (e.g., in its discussion of what is not permissible in userspace). You're mistaking an example of the kind of content WP doesn't want for a rule about what form it must take before we don't want it. See also WP:WIKILAWYER and various other pages (GAMING, POLICY, etc.) on bending policy interpretation to try to reach conclusions, on the basis of nit-picking over wording technicalities, that were clearly not the actual intent. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"useless to 99.99% of readers". The names of the victims are squarely within the scope of the article. That is the basic argument for their inclusion. Plus the fact that there are no reasons for omitting this information. I did not argue that
"It's verifiable". I would never make that argument; it goes without saying that a prerequisite to including such information is that it be verifiable. Bus stop ( talk) 00:55, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Separately, I'm intrigued by InedibleHulk's idea, though it will actually tell us what news publishers think news readers in a particular market want to see when the news is fresh, which isn't exactly equivalent to what global-encyclopedia readers want to see years later. And as I indicated above, the more local the news coverage is (to the event's locus or to places of residence of one or more victims) the more likely it is to include names and other personal details of victims because of local interest (greatly increased likelihood that this publication's readers knew a victim, or know a family member, or frequented a have business the victim owned, or whatever). It's common for smaller-distribution newspapers to publish obituaries of alumni of the local high school even if they haven't lived in that town for decades. Still, an analysis of how major national newspapers treat such events would be informative.
PS: There's also a scale issue we don't talk about much or at all: It's much more sensible to include the names of three victims of a mass shooting that barely qualifies as one, than to list all the victims of the September 11 Attacks, to pick some opposite-extremes examples. This actually makes it really, really clear why NOT:MEMORIAL is pertinent: we have real-world memorials for "big bunch o' deaths" incidents, carefully researched by committees for creation of such memorials. They are doing a very different job and serving a very different purpose from an encyclopedia's. The passage of time also makes it clearer and clearer why name lists are not encyclopedic; for example,
Saint Patrick's Battalion could easily provide a list of names (they're well documented, as least as to known members), at least of those who were executed by the US Army (an action questionably legal under then-extant international agreements about courts martial, etc.). But our article does not do that, and no one appears to consider it a problem.
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SMcCandlish
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"The criterion for inclusion of any information in the article is whether it adds to a reader's understanding of the event; these names do not and cannot."You are telling me that gender, age and occupation describe the person. But how does gender, age, and occupation add to reader understanding of the event? Bus stop ( talk) 14:26, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"I would think age, gender, or occupation could be factors in victims of a multiple shooting". But are they factors in this shooting? Bus stop ( talk) 14:59, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"I think it's of interest to readers". And I think the names of the deceased are of interest to readers. Plus the fact that in nine-out-of-ten similar articles (by my estimation—see here) the names of the deceased are included. This is not counting articles where the number of decedents is so large that including the names would be impractical. Bus stop ( talk) 16:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"Names do not help gain an understanding of the event."Bus stop ( talk) 15:55, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
"most coverage seems to NOT name the victims"Would it be your understanding that information only warrants inclusion in an article if a sufficient number of sources contain that information? What would that sufficient number of sources be? The Chicago Tribune, a good quality source, writes "The victims were identified as Clayton Parks, 32, of Elgin; Trevor Wehner, 21, of Sheridan, Ill., who had been living in DeKalb and attending Northern Illinois University; Russell Beyer, 47, of Yorkville; Vicente Juarez, 54, of Oswego; and Josh Pinkard, 37 of Oswego. All five were employed by Henry Pratt Co." That is a source supporting the information under discussion. Can you please tell us what your objection is to inclusion in our article of material derived from that source?
The same information is also found in this source, this source, this source, this source, this source, and this source. Two of those articles are devoted entirely to the victims.
Sources are not all necessarily local. Here is BBC coverage identifying the victims. Here is Guardian coverage identifying the victims. The Wall Street Journal, considered by some to be an international newspaper, supplies us with the identities of the victims. Bus stop ( talk) 04:07, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
This argument pertaining to local versus international coverage seems to have been presented by one editor. These are the instances in which they made such an argument:
*if no one died but random people with no non-local news coverage other than having been killed"
*local media often go right down to "Long-term resident Jane Smith (neé Garcia) of Serkajian Blvd., was killed in a mass-shooting on Thursday while visiting Detroit. She is survived by her mother, Janet Garcia, the proprietor of Hair by Janet on 43rd Street, and ...". This privacy angle is just super-mega-ultra-weak, sorry.
* Even a international or national-level news article would most often omit this material; it's mostly local to state/province/county coverage that is going to include it, because there's a reasonable likelihood that some readers will have a connection to the deceased or their families. When reading of a train wreck in Indonesia, or a terrorist-bombing Munich (or Virginia), the average en.wp reader is not going to have any reason to care about the victim names; we do not have national much less local editions.
I only just looked, today, or else I would have responded sooner.
The BBC even uses list form, which is the form I think we should be using. The BBC writes
"Who are the victims?"
"Police named the five as:"
"Russell Beyer from Yorkville, Illinois"
"Vicente Juarez from Oswego, Illinois"
"Clayton Parks of Elgin, Illinois, the human resources manager"
"Josh Pinkard from Oswego, the plant manager"
"Trevor Wehner, a 21-year-old student at Northern Illinois University and a human resources intern on his first day at Henry Pratt"
"Three of the victims died in the room where the suspect's termination from his job was being announced, a fourth close by and the fifth on another floor."
The Guardian, also a British publication, uses prose form, writing:
In a press conference, Aurora police chief Kristen Ziman said Clayton Parks, Trevor Wehner, Russell Beyer, Vicente Juarez and Josh Pinkard – all employees of the Henry Pratt Company, where the shooting occurred – were killed.Parks was a human resources manager while Wehner was an HR intern. Pinkard was a plant manager, Beyer a mold operator, and Juarez a stock room attendant and forklift operator. Bus stop ( talk) 20:52, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
I can only go by what you have said already—that "most coverage seems to NOT name the victims"
. Haven't I shown you an abundance of sources that do name the victims—including "international" sources? As I have already asked you—would it be your understanding that information only warrants inclusion in an article if a sufficient number of sources contain that information? And I followed that up with another tough question—what would that sufficient number of sources be?
Rather than engage in any kind of dialogue you seem only interested in winning. The most interesting thing for me at this point would be to hear an actual heartfelt reason that you feel this information should be left out of the article. 90% of similar articles do not omit some form of victim identification. I have listed 190 articles here that include victim identification. I examined well over 200. Please tell me, at this article, why you feel that the identities of the victims don't warrant inclusion.
Writing an article isn't about getting your way. It is about dialogue when there are disagreements. And it is about compiling well-sourced and on-topic information. Please consider just conceding that in the best interests of the reader, the names of the victims should be included in this article, plus rudimentary other details about their identities. Wikipedia should be adhering to reliable sources. That means including that which is widely reported in the best quality sources. Bus stop ( talk) 01:08, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.. {{ ping}} me when you can show me where it says all content, and not just entire articles. — Locke Cole • t • c 05:32, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree, from the arguments above it's clear there's no reason to exclude the victim list.None of us gets to play judge as to the relative strength of opponents' arguments, for obvious reasons (ever met an editor who didn't think their position was the strongest?). If you are thinking of adding names without an uninvolved close assessing a consensus to do so (again), I would advise against it; you've already received one block at this article. If you want to request a close at WP:ANRFC, I don't object; I think this has fairly well played out. But the only way to avoid a formal close is to agree that there is no consensus to include, based on numbers alone; i.e. it takes an uninvolved closer to close against the numbers (and even that almost never happens). ― Mandruss ☎ 01:34, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Additionally, if WP:MEMORIAL applied to article content, the mere mention of a name and other rudimentary facts would not constitute memorialization. We don't engage in sentimentalizing anywhere on Wikipedia and we are not engaging in sentimentalization here. I don't think it is in our DNA to "memorialize". This is strictly content within the subject area of an article. The aim is to write a complete article as opposed to an article that is missing relevant information.
This is not an article on Workplace violence or Mass shootings. Articles such as those take a more distant view of these sorts of incidents. At this article we are not trying to draw conclusions about causes unless our sources suggest theories specific to this incident—and such theories are in short supply. It would be an understatement to say that these sorts of incidents are very baffling. Our purpose in this article tends to be simple and direct. Our purpose involves mostly the stating of applicable facts. And we don't deliberately omit relevant material.
In any event, it is the constellation of specific details that give that event an identity distinct even from similar events. The names of the victims are one such specific detail. In this article we are trying to provide the reader with a resource on this specific incident. Sources of impeccable quality, too numerous to mention, provide information about the victims, therefore I think we should too. Bus stop ( talk) 03:56, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Why should we omit the names?See Oppose !votes and prior discussion. ― Mandruss ☎ 00:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
We do not weed through facts to see if they enhance the reader's understanding..."
...omission of that information does not enhance anything"
"mixed" !vote. You favor a distinction between "targeted" victims and "random" victims. But do sources make that distinction? Bus stop ( talk) 14:53, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
"spirit of WP:BLPNAME"is that "when the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations" we should omit it. But the information on the deceased, including their names, has been "widely disseminated".
It should be noted that memorialization and WP:BLPNAME serve different purposes and those different purposes are almost mutually exclusive. One does not memorialize at the same time that one infringes on privacy. Bus stop ( talk) 13:39, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
When deciding whether to include a name, its publication in secondary sources other than news media, such as scholarly journals or the work of recognized experts, should be afforded greater weight than the brief appearance of names in news stories. Consider whether the inclusion of names of living private individuals who are not directly involved in an article's topic adds significant value.While it says "living", I reject the notion that a person loses his right to privacy when he is killed, and his living family's privacy is not insignificant.
90% of similar articles include information on decedents, including names. Do you think that this sort of information should be removed from Stoneman Douglas High School shooting or Pittsburgh synagogue shooting? It is standard to include victim names and ages. See also 2016 Oakland warehouse fire.
I favor the inclusion of information unless there is a good reason to omit information. Our role is to supply an abundance of verified, on-topic information for the reader. Our articles should be complete to whatever extent possible. There has to be a good reason to omit on-topic information. I don't think the reader benefits from omitting this information. Bus stop ( talk) 00:42, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Do you think that this sort of information should be removed from Stoneman Douglas High School shooting or Pittsburgh synagogue shooting?I think that goes without saying—the situation there is no different than here—which is not to say that I intend to propose that anytime soon. Both result from local discussion (although the Stoneman Douglas result was "no consensus" and so would have been an omit if a couple of editors had not edit-warred to include the list prior to the start of that RfC). But your precedent argument has already been made and countered by multiple editors, so it's entirely circular to keep mentioning it again and again. As I've tried to impress upon you to deaf ears, circular and repetitive discussion is not only unconstructive but actually impedes other discussion that might actually be useful, and reduces the chances of new arrivals reading much prior discussion. Never mind the sheer amount of text, now approaching 19,000 words, who wants to spend their limited time reading the same arguments over and over?
I favor the inclusion of information unless there is a good reason to omit information.Which is directly counter to a fundamental Wikipedia principle—as I previously said (see also WP:IDHT). ― Mandruss ☎ 01:08, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
And by the way, I'd rather not be talking about you or me or any other editor. But you are persistently referencing me, as if I were the topic of conversation. Am I exhibiting bad behavior? Gee—I guess one can't try hard enough. Even normalcy is construed as bad behavior. You tell me not to ping you. Fine—I don't ping you. You even tell me not to address you by your Username. You wrote "You know, you don't have to start a reply with my username when it's obvious who you're addressing." What will be next? Will you soon be telling me not to debate the question that we are debating? If someone else posts after your post it might not be clear who I was addressing. I haven't read in policy that one should not address another editor by their Username. But I will certainly comply with your request. I will not address you by your Username again. Bus stop ( talk) 01:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Am I exhibiting bad behavior?Absolutely. You persistently abuse article talk pages and I find that offensive. (Please, please don't ask me "How do I abuse article talk pages?", a question already answered more times than I can count, including just above.) I can't think of a single other editor with your amount of experience who does that, or at least to that degree. You seem simply unable to agree to disagree, with no sense of when further debate would almost certainly be fruitless, and that's important in all Wikipedia discussions.
The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." There are three basic outcomes to any discussion: consensus for, consensus against, or no consensus. Only "consensus for" results in the disputed content's inclusion. Omission is the default.When you state, "I favor the inclusion of information unless there is a good reason to omit..." or ask repeatedly "how would the omission of the victim names from this article benefit the reader", it leads me to believe you don't agree with or fully understand that portion of the Verifiability policy. When you pose these difficult questions of yours, you're essentially slapping this concept in the face. -- GoneIn60 ( talk) 05:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
The initial state of this page was that it included the names until they were deleted by Mandruss- Sorry, I'm not going to let that patently false statement stand. The initial state of this page was this.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
A request for uninvolved close is pending at WP:ANRFC. ― Mandruss ☎ 22:31, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
Should the article include a list of the deceased victims' names? 11:59, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
There appears to be some confusion regarding naming the victims. WP:NOTMEMORIAL is clear that articles for non-notable subjects is against policy, but it doesn't seem to take a position on whether or not they can be included in the article body itself. There was an attempt to codify restricting their addition altogether a couple of years ago, but that attempt failed to gain community consensus. I've added the victim names as well as a reliable source/ref for that specific aspect. If someone finds a better source for other details (specifically, age of the victims), feel free to replace/add to the refs. All that said: if there is a compelling reason to not include the victims, I'm open to being convinced. — Locke Cole • t • c 05:57, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Why include the name of the perpetrator then?As I said above, the factors and arguments are always the same. Your question has been asked and answered numerous times in discussions at previous articles. Somebody else may feel like rehashing that yet again here; I don't. ― Mandruss ☎ 10:14, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
"the factors and arguments are always the same"but that isn't at all true. It would be more correct to say the factors are always different. Is a shooting at music venue the same as a shooting at a workplace? You certainly don't know that the factors pertaining to one incident apply to what may superficially seem to be a similar incident. We write separate articles because we assume each article is on a separate topic. Bus stop ( talk) 16:48, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
"Then why include the shooter's name?" is childish false equivalence and slippery slope; the perpetrator is always and automatically not indiscriminate to include in the article on a notable crime, and the article may focus entire sections on that person and their background. But a bunch of non-notable victims may well be indiscriminate to include, and would not dwell on them or have section on them. They are not comparable. Next, "one was at work and one at a concert" being taken to mean "factors and arguments are different" in this context is the fallacy of equivocation, here substituting the obvious meaning "encyclopedically relevant factor that could affect whether a name-list is appropriate" with "any factor whatsoever, just so I can say they're different and hope people will fall for my Jedi mind trick". In point of fact, a concert and jobsite mass shooting of these sorts are precisely the same from a WP perspective: a bunch of non-notable people died. It's only going to be a different factor that we care about for this kind of analysis producing a different actually on-topic argument about this question when non-notable people are killed. A mass-shooting in the New Zealand Parliament would obviously be a good case for a name list and perhaps some additional information on the victims besides names, because parliamentarians are notable. But no special case can be made for a list because it was a school versus a restaurant versus a bus stop versus a political rally, if no one died but random people with no non-local news coverage other than having been killed. I've decided to support including the list, for consistency with a larger number of articles on such events, but the question overall cannot be settled with bogus hand-waving like what you've offered. You're doing more harm than good to the keep argument when you engage in such tactics.
"This always seems to come up and the answer is always not to include victim lists."No, that is incorrect. See here. By my estimation victim lists are included about 90% of the time. Bus stop ( talk) 04:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
"the factors and arguments are always the same". I think the factors are different, or at least that is the assumption I have. Are you really engaging in this discussion? Bus stop ( talk) 16:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
"most coverage seems to NOT name the victims". I was asking you why that should matter? Even if every source does not contain the information, does that constitute a reason to omit the information? Isn't it standard practice to assemble an article by deriving material from multiple sources? And the reason I posted
"a bit out of time-order"was because I did not know that I could ping you when I posted the first time due to the fact that your User page has not been initiated. My mistake. So I then posted a second time with the ping included. Bus stop ( talk) 07:01, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"when most external web items do not give names then DUE indicates that WP should not"Markbassett—we commonly assemble articles from multiple sources. All of the sources used do not necessarily contain all of the information necessary to assemble an article. We don't automatically exclude information that is only found in some of the sources or even a minority of the sources. It is certainly my contention that the names of the deceased are pertinent to the subject of this article. We can have a conversation, but that is reliant on your participation. As I've asked you before—why do you want to exclude this information from this article? There is no need to invoke WP:ONUS or any other policy. I am a reasonable person. I am inclined to engage in friendly conversation. Just pretend that we were sitting on barstools or in any comfy setting. This is a simple and conversational question: why do you want to omit the names of the deceased from the article? Bus stop ( talk) 13:28, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
Polling may be divisive and cause factionalism. While a poll may occasionally make it a lot easier for people to find a mutually agreeable position, in other cases it can undermine discussion and discourse. In the worst case, polls might cause participants not to civilly engage with the other voters, but merely instead to choose camps. By polarizing discussion and raising the stakes, polls may contribute to a breakdown in civility, making discussion of controversial issues extremely acrimonious. This makes it difficult for participants to assume good faith. In many cases, simple discussion might be better at encouraging careful consideration, dissection and eventual synthesis of each side's arguments than a poll would.Also, threats on my talk page are unwelcome. Please, if you really think you can make a case at WP:AN/I, don't waste time coming to my talk page, go make your case and then leave the mandatory notification on my talk page. Thanks! — Locke Cole • t • c 16:24, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
We provide specifics because there is value in specifics. That value does not have to be justified. The burden is not on me to explain how a specific helps a reader to understand the subject of an article. And inarguably the people who died in an incident are not so peripheral to the incident that their names do not even warrant inclusion. We include other proper names so what is the great problem that you perceive in naming the deceased? Bus stop ( talk) 17:15, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
Changed to support, per discussion below. Since a supermajority of similar articles (after lots and lots of similar discussion) contain such lists, there should be a genuinely compelling reason to do it differently here, or it confuses readers (and editors for that matter) into thinking the article is faulty. I'd be opposed to using a fancy list for this, or a whole section for it, per NOTMEMORIAL; just use an inline list in a sentence, following an introductory phrase and a colon, and do not go into details about them (age, gender, occupation, yadda yadda).
Update: A footnote would be even better. The victims were not specifically targeted because of who they are or what roles they play or what demographics they fit, and they are non-notable, so their names and occupations and ages and so on are not encyclopedically relevant in the main prose.
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SMcCandlish
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SMcCandlish
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This is the area of crime writing. I think most of you objecting to the mention of victim names really don't like the fact that this project covers the area of crime-writing. I think you find it scandalous and gossipy and tawdry and too gritty for your refined tastes. So, to take a swipe at an area that you do not like anyway, you figure you will lop off the "head" of the article, as it were, because in a certain figurative sense, the victims are the head(s) of these articles. The simple fact is that the victims, however randomly-chosen they may have been, become the basis of a story that is reported with a high degree of thoroughness in reliable sources.
To write about a crime, you do not say that a person was killed, rather you name the person that was killed. I think it is somewhat humorous that you all are deluding yourselves into thinking that you write about a death in an article about a crime and you only say that a male of 32 years old who was an accountant was killed. That is a contrivance. Every reader would perceive that as a contrivance. A name is a "handle" by which one comes to grip with who it was that died. The ending of life is too stark a notion to be relegated to generalities. And the very basis of these articles are the endings of lives in these incidents. We don't have to look to other articles to see that this article should be listing victim names. You all could do the project a favor and stop your crusade against articles that report on crimes and other tragedies. This is a legitimate area of Wikipedia. Perhaps you could take your crusading ways to another area of the project. Have you considered making Wikipedia's coverage of pornography sex-free? That might be a good next project for you to consider.
Bus stop (
talk)
14:21, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
"understanding the lives of the victims"? I never said anything like that and presumably you are responding to me. Bus stop ( talk) 15:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.It is an accepted tradition, as you can see by the fact that 90% of articles of this type include a list of victims in them. WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS has absolutely no relevance here, and it seems you just like the shortcut name, as the linked page adds nothing to this discussion. As to your other comments, thank you for the personal attacks! I look forward to your well reasoned objections, and not just a bunch of WP jargon tossed out hoping I'd ignore the fact that, at the end of all your talking, you never actually addressed my argument. =) — Locke Cole • t • c 05:25, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
@ SMcCandlish: Repeated attempts to establish a default, include or omit, have failed to reach consensus; the mantra is generally that this needs case-by-case evaluation. Case-by-case evaluation means inconsistency between articles, or it wouldn't be needed. So your comment conflicts with the current community view. ― Mandruss ☎ 04:13, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"when it gets to the point that, say, 75% or so of cases are one way rather than the other..."You participated in this thread. If you look at the lists I and others have compiled I think you will agree that roughly 90% of articles meeting reasonable criteria for consideration contain all victim names. Bus stop ( talk) 05:35, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
If we're already almost always including the names of the deceased in articles like this – despite some heated but reasoned objection – then that really should be a guideline (since there obviously is recurrent strife, but it's not having any effect on the amount of articles with these lists in them). If the community to date has been unwilling to codify it, it's because the idea was proposed poorly (without stats – until someone else provided them, incompletely and very late into the thread – and without making it clear that we're simply establishing a default, in a guideline (to which exceptions may sometimes apply, as always), not writing an immutable policy. Or, in some cases, it's because a tiny handful of editors have pulled off a WP:FAITACCOMPLI and the community doesn't agree with it. I don't think the latter is really likely; in the cases I can think of, there was already a general principle settled by consensus that the "accompliteers" were defying with a topically specific variance of their own devising. That's not the case here. We don't have a codified rule that gets anywhere near this, so there's nothing for a WP:FACTION to be defying.
Immediately below the last
WP:VPPOL RfC about this list-o'-the-dead matter is
another RfC that illustrates how to take a "we haven't settled on this in 10 years yet" matter and actually get it settled. It requires studious neutrality, and it helps to provide an index of past discussion, and a summary of pro/con arguments that is actually fair, and a reason to settle it. As the opener of that, I even refused to !vote in it. That said, I concur that re-RfCing the list-of-mass-death-names stuff would not go over well this soon after the last one. Give it a year. PS: I say all the above (which sounds rather pro-inclusion) despite personally feeling exclusionist about it, because the roughly 90% rate of inclusion tells me that my preference doesn't comport with the operational consensus, even if the community is loath to make it a codified one. WP teaches one to divorce subjective preference from objective observation of community norms (and politics).
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SMcCandlish
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"personally feeling exclusionist about it"? Bus stop ( talk) 16:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
"A compromise position is also possible: Put them in a footnote for the sake of completeness + sensitivity to relevance, instead of in the main body prose. Make a template for it, even."Please explain to me how on the one hand we can say that the inclusion of the names constitutes memorialization and on the other hand say that the inclusion of the names in the body of the article is somehow at odds with issues of
"sensitivity". Wouldn't it be one way or the other? Memorialization is something that is done with sensitivity; that is the only way it is done. As I touched upon in my first post, immediately above, the mere mention of the name of a decedent is the most minimal form of memorialization. Policy actually does not say that we can't memorialize the deceased. It simply is not done. It is not in our DNA to wax eloquent and sentimentally about a decedent. Doing so would be anathema to the Wikipedia culture. I looked at many of these articles. I did not see one instance of anything I could consider memorialization. Everybody who edits Wikipedia knows better than to attempt to introduce a eulogy into an article on a tragic incident such as this one. In all instances the information on the deceased is limited to a few rudimentary facts: name, age, gender, occupation, home town. This is not excessive as concerns memorialization and I don't think this runs counter to issues of sensitivity. Bus stop ( talk) 00:23, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
PS: Your view that MEMORIAL cannot pertain to in-article content is not borne out; it is routinely cited and acted upon to remove content and to cause revision to the tone of content. It may not focus on this, but there is no question at all that the community accepts the broader interpretation. That whole section of WP:NOT (more often cited as WP:NOTWEBHOST) is in fact not constrained even in its explicit wording to the whole-page level, anyway, but also addresses in-page content (e.g., in its discussion of what is not permissible in userspace). You're mistaking an example of the kind of content WP doesn't want for a rule about what form it must take before we don't want it. See also WP:WIKILAWYER and various other pages (GAMING, POLICY, etc.) on bending policy interpretation to try to reach conclusions, on the basis of nit-picking over wording technicalities, that were clearly not the actual intent. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"useless to 99.99% of readers". The names of the victims are squarely within the scope of the article. That is the basic argument for their inclusion. Plus the fact that there are no reasons for omitting this information. I did not argue that
"It's verifiable". I would never make that argument; it goes without saying that a prerequisite to including such information is that it be verifiable. Bus stop ( talk) 00:55, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Separately, I'm intrigued by InedibleHulk's idea, though it will actually tell us what news publishers think news readers in a particular market want to see when the news is fresh, which isn't exactly equivalent to what global-encyclopedia readers want to see years later. And as I indicated above, the more local the news coverage is (to the event's locus or to places of residence of one or more victims) the more likely it is to include names and other personal details of victims because of local interest (greatly increased likelihood that this publication's readers knew a victim, or know a family member, or frequented a have business the victim owned, or whatever). It's common for smaller-distribution newspapers to publish obituaries of alumni of the local high school even if they haven't lived in that town for decades. Still, an analysis of how major national newspapers treat such events would be informative.
PS: There's also a scale issue we don't talk about much or at all: It's much more sensible to include the names of three victims of a mass shooting that barely qualifies as one, than to list all the victims of the September 11 Attacks, to pick some opposite-extremes examples. This actually makes it really, really clear why NOT:MEMORIAL is pertinent: we have real-world memorials for "big bunch o' deaths" incidents, carefully researched by committees for creation of such memorials. They are doing a very different job and serving a very different purpose from an encyclopedia's. The passage of time also makes it clearer and clearer why name lists are not encyclopedic; for example,
Saint Patrick's Battalion could easily provide a list of names (they're well documented, as least as to known members), at least of those who were executed by the US Army (an action questionably legal under then-extant international agreements about courts martial, etc.). But our article does not do that, and no one appears to consider it a problem.
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SMcCandlish
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"The criterion for inclusion of any information in the article is whether it adds to a reader's understanding of the event; these names do not and cannot."You are telling me that gender, age and occupation describe the person. But how does gender, age, and occupation add to reader understanding of the event? Bus stop ( talk) 14:26, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"I would think age, gender, or occupation could be factors in victims of a multiple shooting". But are they factors in this shooting? Bus stop ( talk) 14:59, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"I think it's of interest to readers". And I think the names of the deceased are of interest to readers. Plus the fact that in nine-out-of-ten similar articles (by my estimation—see here) the names of the deceased are included. This is not counting articles where the number of decedents is so large that including the names would be impractical. Bus stop ( talk) 16:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
"Names do not help gain an understanding of the event."Bus stop ( talk) 15:55, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
"most coverage seems to NOT name the victims"Would it be your understanding that information only warrants inclusion in an article if a sufficient number of sources contain that information? What would that sufficient number of sources be? The Chicago Tribune, a good quality source, writes "The victims were identified as Clayton Parks, 32, of Elgin; Trevor Wehner, 21, of Sheridan, Ill., who had been living in DeKalb and attending Northern Illinois University; Russell Beyer, 47, of Yorkville; Vicente Juarez, 54, of Oswego; and Josh Pinkard, 37 of Oswego. All five were employed by Henry Pratt Co." That is a source supporting the information under discussion. Can you please tell us what your objection is to inclusion in our article of material derived from that source?
The same information is also found in this source, this source, this source, this source, this source, and this source. Two of those articles are devoted entirely to the victims.
Sources are not all necessarily local. Here is BBC coverage identifying the victims. Here is Guardian coverage identifying the victims. The Wall Street Journal, considered by some to be an international newspaper, supplies us with the identities of the victims. Bus stop ( talk) 04:07, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
This argument pertaining to local versus international coverage seems to have been presented by one editor. These are the instances in which they made such an argument:
*if no one died but random people with no non-local news coverage other than having been killed"
*local media often go right down to "Long-term resident Jane Smith (neé Garcia) of Serkajian Blvd., was killed in a mass-shooting on Thursday while visiting Detroit. She is survived by her mother, Janet Garcia, the proprietor of Hair by Janet on 43rd Street, and ...". This privacy angle is just super-mega-ultra-weak, sorry.
* Even a international or national-level news article would most often omit this material; it's mostly local to state/province/county coverage that is going to include it, because there's a reasonable likelihood that some readers will have a connection to the deceased or their families. When reading of a train wreck in Indonesia, or a terrorist-bombing Munich (or Virginia), the average en.wp reader is not going to have any reason to care about the victim names; we do not have national much less local editions.
I only just looked, today, or else I would have responded sooner.
The BBC even uses list form, which is the form I think we should be using. The BBC writes
"Who are the victims?"
"Police named the five as:"
"Russell Beyer from Yorkville, Illinois"
"Vicente Juarez from Oswego, Illinois"
"Clayton Parks of Elgin, Illinois, the human resources manager"
"Josh Pinkard from Oswego, the plant manager"
"Trevor Wehner, a 21-year-old student at Northern Illinois University and a human resources intern on his first day at Henry Pratt"
"Three of the victims died in the room where the suspect's termination from his job was being announced, a fourth close by and the fifth on another floor."
The Guardian, also a British publication, uses prose form, writing:
In a press conference, Aurora police chief Kristen Ziman said Clayton Parks, Trevor Wehner, Russell Beyer, Vicente Juarez and Josh Pinkard – all employees of the Henry Pratt Company, where the shooting occurred – were killed.Parks was a human resources manager while Wehner was an HR intern. Pinkard was a plant manager, Beyer a mold operator, and Juarez a stock room attendant and forklift operator. Bus stop ( talk) 20:52, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
I can only go by what you have said already—that "most coverage seems to NOT name the victims"
. Haven't I shown you an abundance of sources that do name the victims—including "international" sources? As I have already asked you—would it be your understanding that information only warrants inclusion in an article if a sufficient number of sources contain that information? And I followed that up with another tough question—what would that sufficient number of sources be?
Rather than engage in any kind of dialogue you seem only interested in winning. The most interesting thing for me at this point would be to hear an actual heartfelt reason that you feel this information should be left out of the article. 90% of similar articles do not omit some form of victim identification. I have listed 190 articles here that include victim identification. I examined well over 200. Please tell me, at this article, why you feel that the identities of the victims don't warrant inclusion.
Writing an article isn't about getting your way. It is about dialogue when there are disagreements. And it is about compiling well-sourced and on-topic information. Please consider just conceding that in the best interests of the reader, the names of the victims should be included in this article, plus rudimentary other details about their identities. Wikipedia should be adhering to reliable sources. That means including that which is widely reported in the best quality sources. Bus stop ( talk) 01:08, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements.. {{ ping}} me when you can show me where it says all content, and not just entire articles. — Locke Cole • t • c 05:32, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree, from the arguments above it's clear there's no reason to exclude the victim list.None of us gets to play judge as to the relative strength of opponents' arguments, for obvious reasons (ever met an editor who didn't think their position was the strongest?). If you are thinking of adding names without an uninvolved close assessing a consensus to do so (again), I would advise against it; you've already received one block at this article. If you want to request a close at WP:ANRFC, I don't object; I think this has fairly well played out. But the only way to avoid a formal close is to agree that there is no consensus to include, based on numbers alone; i.e. it takes an uninvolved closer to close against the numbers (and even that almost never happens). ― Mandruss ☎ 01:34, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Additionally, if WP:MEMORIAL applied to article content, the mere mention of a name and other rudimentary facts would not constitute memorialization. We don't engage in sentimentalizing anywhere on Wikipedia and we are not engaging in sentimentalization here. I don't think it is in our DNA to "memorialize". This is strictly content within the subject area of an article. The aim is to write a complete article as opposed to an article that is missing relevant information.
This is not an article on Workplace violence or Mass shootings. Articles such as those take a more distant view of these sorts of incidents. At this article we are not trying to draw conclusions about causes unless our sources suggest theories specific to this incident—and such theories are in short supply. It would be an understatement to say that these sorts of incidents are very baffling. Our purpose in this article tends to be simple and direct. Our purpose involves mostly the stating of applicable facts. And we don't deliberately omit relevant material.
In any event, it is the constellation of specific details that give that event an identity distinct even from similar events. The names of the victims are one such specific detail. In this article we are trying to provide the reader with a resource on this specific incident. Sources of impeccable quality, too numerous to mention, provide information about the victims, therefore I think we should too. Bus stop ( talk) 03:56, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Why should we omit the names?See Oppose !votes and prior discussion. ― Mandruss ☎ 00:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
We do not weed through facts to see if they enhance the reader's understanding..."
...omission of that information does not enhance anything"
"mixed" !vote. You favor a distinction between "targeted" victims and "random" victims. But do sources make that distinction? Bus stop ( talk) 14:53, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
"spirit of WP:BLPNAME"is that "when the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations" we should omit it. But the information on the deceased, including their names, has been "widely disseminated".
It should be noted that memorialization and WP:BLPNAME serve different purposes and those different purposes are almost mutually exclusive. One does not memorialize at the same time that one infringes on privacy. Bus stop ( talk) 13:39, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
When deciding whether to include a name, its publication in secondary sources other than news media, such as scholarly journals or the work of recognized experts, should be afforded greater weight than the brief appearance of names in news stories. Consider whether the inclusion of names of living private individuals who are not directly involved in an article's topic adds significant value.While it says "living", I reject the notion that a person loses his right to privacy when he is killed, and his living family's privacy is not insignificant.
90% of similar articles include information on decedents, including names. Do you think that this sort of information should be removed from Stoneman Douglas High School shooting or Pittsburgh synagogue shooting? It is standard to include victim names and ages. See also 2016 Oakland warehouse fire.
I favor the inclusion of information unless there is a good reason to omit information. Our role is to supply an abundance of verified, on-topic information for the reader. Our articles should be complete to whatever extent possible. There has to be a good reason to omit on-topic information. I don't think the reader benefits from omitting this information. Bus stop ( talk) 00:42, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Do you think that this sort of information should be removed from Stoneman Douglas High School shooting or Pittsburgh synagogue shooting?I think that goes without saying—the situation there is no different than here—which is not to say that I intend to propose that anytime soon. Both result from local discussion (although the Stoneman Douglas result was "no consensus" and so would have been an omit if a couple of editors had not edit-warred to include the list prior to the start of that RfC). But your precedent argument has already been made and countered by multiple editors, so it's entirely circular to keep mentioning it again and again. As I've tried to impress upon you to deaf ears, circular and repetitive discussion is not only unconstructive but actually impedes other discussion that might actually be useful, and reduces the chances of new arrivals reading much prior discussion. Never mind the sheer amount of text, now approaching 19,000 words, who wants to spend their limited time reading the same arguments over and over?
I favor the inclusion of information unless there is a good reason to omit information.Which is directly counter to a fundamental Wikipedia principle—as I previously said (see also WP:IDHT). ― Mandruss ☎ 01:08, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
And by the way, I'd rather not be talking about you or me or any other editor. But you are persistently referencing me, as if I were the topic of conversation. Am I exhibiting bad behavior? Gee—I guess one can't try hard enough. Even normalcy is construed as bad behavior. You tell me not to ping you. Fine—I don't ping you. You even tell me not to address you by your Username. You wrote "You know, you don't have to start a reply with my username when it's obvious who you're addressing." What will be next? Will you soon be telling me not to debate the question that we are debating? If someone else posts after your post it might not be clear who I was addressing. I haven't read in policy that one should not address another editor by their Username. But I will certainly comply with your request. I will not address you by your Username again. Bus stop ( talk) 01:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Am I exhibiting bad behavior?Absolutely. You persistently abuse article talk pages and I find that offensive. (Please, please don't ask me "How do I abuse article talk pages?", a question already answered more times than I can count, including just above.) I can't think of a single other editor with your amount of experience who does that, or at least to that degree. You seem simply unable to agree to disagree, with no sense of when further debate would almost certainly be fruitless, and that's important in all Wikipedia discussions.
The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." There are three basic outcomes to any discussion: consensus for, consensus against, or no consensus. Only "consensus for" results in the disputed content's inclusion. Omission is the default.When you state, "I favor the inclusion of information unless there is a good reason to omit..." or ask repeatedly "how would the omission of the victim names from this article benefit the reader", it leads me to believe you don't agree with or fully understand that portion of the Verifiability policy. When you pose these difficult questions of yours, you're essentially slapping this concept in the face. -- GoneIn60 ( talk) 05:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
The initial state of this page was that it included the names until they were deleted by Mandruss- Sorry, I'm not going to let that patently false statement stand. The initial state of this page was this.