Talk:Kent State shootings

Article Name
How is this article not titled "Kent State massacre"? It's by far the most common name used to refer to the slaughter that happened that day. Hallward's Ghost (Kevin) (My talkpage) 20:29, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely. A quick search on Google Trends shows that massacre is the more commonly used term by web searchers in the US and Worldwide. MichaelWPhelps (talk) 04:56, 13 August 2018 (UTC)


 * This was discussed quite awhile back when the article was new. See Talk:Kent State shootings/Archive 1. Of note, the National Historic Landmark listing is "May 4, 1970, Kent State Shootings Site". It's also referred to as the "Kent State Shootings" or "May 4 Shootings" at Ohio History Central, History.com, and by Kent State University itself, among others. In a Google search, however, "Kent State shootings" returns 103,000 results, while "Kent State massacre" returns 63,000. Massacre is used regularly (hence the redirect and the bolded term), but nothing indicates it has any kind of significant precedence in secondary sources over "shootings". --JonRidinger (talk) 19:00, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, JonRidinger has it right. Tvoz / talk 22:41, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure listing a .gov site in your point is a great idea for an event where the government massacred unarmed protestors. A bit of an editorial bias there, wouldn't you think? 74.138.112.174 (talk) 20:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

This was unequivocally a massacre of innocent civilians peacefully protesting. It was not a shooting. The title is politically biased snd shameful. Xj (talk) 00:46, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Please read the reasoning behind the title - above and in the talk archives. Editors are not minimizing the  horror of the event, nut but following Wikipedia standards for other events, using the more neutral but accurate term "shootings". We are attempting to stay away from bias here, despite personal views of that day. Tvoz / talk 03:54, 28 June 2022 (UTC) corrected Tvoz / talk 04:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Your reply would be less biased, if you did not call Xj by the term "nut". Dimadick (talk) 07:40, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Uh, Dimadick - is this supposed to be a joke? Obviously I made a typo. Tvoz / talk 04:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)


 * As I said 4 years ago, the article is titled based on how it is most frequently referenced in primary and secondary sources per Wikipedia guidelines on article titles. Because "massacre" is used in many secondary sources, it is a redirect and a bold term in the lead, but it isn't the main title because "shootings" has shown to be more common. If primary and secondary sources start using "massacre" more frequently, the article name can be revisited. But for now, nothing has changed since 2018 in how it's referenced. --JonRidinger (talk) 14:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * According to the guidelines set by Wikipedia we should be using language that is commonly referred to in language and not necessarily the "official" title, this is even the case in celebrity and historical figures names. It is abundantly obvious that the term "massacre" is used by more people and that it is the common name accepted, thus it should be the name used for the article. Additionally, shooting is not the more precise term to use with this incident, it was more than just a shooting. Let's be true to what it is commonly referred to as and be precise in using the more correct terminology of calling it a "massacre". 2604:F580:14F:600:B15A:A4D9:1E27:DA2E (talk) 19:04, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

First sentence seems to be too long
The first sentence at the time of this writing seems to be too long. I tried to shorten it, but User:Tvoz reverted to the original length.

The general advice for writing is to use short sentences. According to the Harvard Library Writing Guide, "Ideal sentence length is around 15 to 20 words." Sure, we are not bound to that guide, but we can infer from MOS:INTRO, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article". "Editors should avoid lengthy paragraphs and overly specific descriptions". "Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it ."

After this, we can go to a more specific guideline, MOS:FIRST. It states, "Try to not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead use the first sentence to introduce the topic, and then spread the relevant information out over the entire lead."

I suggest trimming it properly. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 00:54, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I trimmed the first sentence a bit as you're right there was some extraneous material held over from past iterations that wasn't essential, but the earlier version was repetitive and kind of choppy and really not an improvement. I get the point, but I  think what is there is needed don't think we want to be restricted to an arbitrary word count or rules that don't always work for every article - what's there, I think, is necessary and I see no advantage to splitting it.  Maybe other editors would like to weigh in here too. Tvoz / talk 03:28, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Infobox template
The "part of" field in the civilian attack infobox is optional and inappropriate for this article as presented. The definition is "a violent campaign containing the civilian attack event described in the article" and the entries that have been offered  here really do not fit. It is more appropriate for an article like Mỹ Lai massacre or Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were attacks on civilians as a part of larger violent campaigns. Kent State certainly happened because of the Vietnam War but that is best expressed as it is in the text of the article, not as a header to the infobox that can be misunderstood. Tvoz / talk 22:11, 19 April 2023 (UTC)


 * My apologies, but I don't get it. The victims were partaking in the student strike, and the shootings were a response to said activity. So in my view, the partof header is in fact appropriate and the subject doesn't need to be part of a larger campaign. You get "part of the civil rights movement" or "part of Islamic terrorism in Europe," any individual subject described with those headers may not necessarily be part of a larger campaign. GOLDIEM J (talk) 09:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Tvoz is correct. The description in the infobox explanation page indicates that "part of " is for being part of a larger military campaign, not simply related to it or in reaction to it. Yes, Kent State happened because of the Vietnam War, but because of a protest about it, not because of any actual battle that it was a part of. The only thing it's "part of" is the broader Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, but that doesn't seem appropriate given the other examples for "part of". Perhaps it's an issue to take up on the template itself rather than here. --JonRidinger (talk) 15:22, 20 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks Jon. An editor re-added the field, again misunderstanding it according to the template documentation. Categories are the appropriate expressions of related events that this article fits  in, not the "partof" infobox field. It unnecessarily clutters the infobox and these entries are even incorrect according to the definition of the field. Tvoz / talk 05:17, 24 April 2023 (UTC)