Talk:List of rampage killers

Some rules in this article that are questionable
The rules in question are: "Rampage killings with 6 or more dead Rampage killings with at least 4 people killed and least ten victims overall (dead plus injured) Rampage killings with at least 2 people killed and least 12 victims overall (dead plus injured)"

Why were these arbitrary figures used to define rampage killings? Given that the definition apparently comes from this article: http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Rampage_Killer, several of the killings listed in that article involved fewer people and thus aren't included in this list. Even according to Wikipedia, a spree killer "is someone who kills two or more victims in a short time..." The criminalminds Wikia seems to group spree killers and mass murderers under the heading of rampage killers. I admit that if we do take the more general definition, then the list would be lengthy. If that is the sole reason though I would suggest that this page should be marked for deletion rather than just arbitrarily decide that if two people are killed, then there should be 12 victims overall. On the other hand, I don't see any reason why we can't go with the more expansive definition of someone who kills 2 or more people with the understanding that the list would likely be incomplete for some time.DanStevens (talk) 08:20, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

This page came long before the criminal minds article. Elhiggins


 * First off this article was started in June 2008, the Criminal Minds Wikia article was started in March 2009 so obviously this article can't be a derivative of the Wikia article. If every person who killed two people were included the article would end up being several millions bytes long and per WP:AS we have to keep articles a certain size for readability and technical issues. The guidelines are also set to guard against WP:SYSTEMICBIAS as cases that meet the guidelines have a better chance of gaining international press than cases with a smaller casualty rate. If double murders were allowed in the article it would soon have a preponderance of Western cases. Wikipedia also has WP:N requirements, if the requirements are lowered so that any case with two dead is included many many obscure cases would get added and these obscure cases simply may not be notable. The guidelines help to make sure that entries are notable. Note that this list isn't the only list of crimes that has guidelines on what is included, see List of terrorist incidents or List of attacks related to secondary schools for other examples. Yes the guidelines for this list are somewhat arbitrary but I support the current definition over the proposed definition because at least the current guidelines help combat systemic bias and ensures that the article is not flooded with many obscure cases. This article's guidelines have been extensively discussed before and are mentioned in the article's FAQ. -- Millionsandbillions (talk) 19:37, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I think you misunderstood what I was saying about the Criminal Minds Wikia. I didn't say this article was derivative of that, but that the definition given appears to have come from the Criminal Minds Wikia article. Beyond that, I don't really have a problem with your reasoning although realistically, to me it sounds like it would be better to just delete this article. I checked the history of this page and I looked at the last entry for March 2009 and it doesn't have that definition, but this article does cite a source from 2012 as the origin of the definition and I had missed that at first. I don't know whether or not the Criminal Minds Wikia had that definition before then or not. The article tries to cite this for the source of the definition though: Seeger, Thorsten (ed.) School Shootings: International Research, Case Studies, and Concepts for Prevention; Springer, 2012. However, I noticed it was the definition given on the Criminal Minds Wikia site https://web.archive.org/web/20120323150454/http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Rampage_Killer and that is from March 2012 so unfortunately I don't have access to the actual book, so I don't know if that definition actually appears in that book or not, but that would mean that the author of the Criminal Minds Wikia site had pretty early access to that book. The definition I'm referring to is this which appears at the beginning of the article: "A rampage killer has been defined as follows:

A rampage involves the (attempted) killing of multiple persons at least partly in public space by a single physically present perpetrator using (potentially) deadly weapons in a single event without any cooling-off period.[1]" DanStevens (talk) 10:18, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

So I did a search within the book using Google and I can't seem to find that defintion in that book that was cited. I searched for rampage killer and killing of multiple people and these are the results: https://books.google.com/books?id=7GHR3BDWIQ8C&q=rampage+killer#v=snippet&q=rampage%20killer&f=false and https://books.google.com/books?id=7GHR3BDWIQ8C&q=killing+of+multiple+people#v=snippet&q=killing%20of%20multiple%20people&f=false The bottom line is that I'm not sure where that definition came from, but it doesn't appear to have come from that book. If someone else can find it in the book, great. DanStevens (talk) 10:37, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I did another google search for Rampage killing within the book and I found where they got it from is on page 4, though the book itself is taking that definition from another earlier source: https://books.google.com/books?id=7GHR3BDWIQ8C&q=rampage+killing#v=snippet&q=rampage%20killing&f=false so I stand corrected on the fact that the definition didn't originally come from the Criminal Minds Wikia. DanStevens (talk) 10:57, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

This article created the definition. Elhiggins


 * This article created the definition. No it didn't. This article was originally called List of mass murderers and spree killers but was moved to it's current location as a result of this discussion. Also the spree killer article links to a 1997 news story that includes the term "rampage killer", 11 years before this article existed. -- Millionsandbillions (talk) 18:51, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

It looks like there is still no source for the completely arbitrary numbers assigned to the definition of "rampage killing". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:18E8:3:28B6:F000:0:0:3A79 (talk) 16:56, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia allows the membership criteria for list articles to be arbitrary and "limited only by our collective imagination." See WP:SALAT. The WP:LISTCRITERIA section of the Stand-alone lists offers some guidance for establishing membership criteria for a list. Thus, I don't have a problem with the list selection criteria used for the various "list of rampage killer" articles. If someone wants to change the criteria then that would be a valid topic for this talk page to see if WP:CONSENSUS can be reached for the proposed change. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 07:14, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Civil Air Transport 106
Number 4 on the Asia list. There has never been any confirmation that the crash was caused by anything other than engine failure/loss of control. Officially at least, any connection to a hijacking just boils down to conspiracy, I think that that justifies a removal from the list. A Green Guy (talk) 09:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, not sure why this is one here, both names return no link to hijacking. Advicefrog (talk) 05:07, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Whilst I do not speak the language, the machine translation of the Chinese Wikipedia article about the crash does mention something about a hijacking, citing 4 sources (one of them is a dead link, the others are all in Chinese). I found a blog post about this in English: http://taiwanairpower.org/blog/?p=953, it references two CIA documents which talk about several things which could make this a possible hijacking. The links from the blog are dead now, but the documents still exist on the CIA website at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/c05278376.pdf and https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/C05278375.pdf. We could leave it in as "suspected" like we do with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. TVShowFan122 (talk) 19:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Totally agree with this, I was confused on why CAT flight 106 was included when there is no evidence provided in the page's sources that there was any hijacking involved, and the text of the page only mentions an engine failure. I think it should be removed from the rampage killing list, unless someone fluent in Mandarin can look at the Chinese Wikipedia page for CAT flight 106 and find any proof the crash was intentional. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Solluxstark (talk • contribs) 21:46, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Shouldn't the Oklahoma City bombing be considered a "religious, political, or ethnic crimes"?
The OKC bombing was motivated by anti-government sentiment and accordingly a federal government office was targeted. Why then is it considered an "other incident" instead of a political mass murder? Riverhugger (talk) 21:51, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Since Terry Nichols was involved, does OkC even count as a "single physically-present perpetrator"? I note that Sept-11-2001 attack on New York City is not in the list at all, I assume because there were multiple terrorists per plane. But if OkC stays, I think 9-11 should be here. AristosM (talk) 12:10, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

isn't Patrick Crusius missing?
. Avistemp (talk) 21:19, 24 June 2024 (UTC)