Talk:List of rampage killers (school massacres)/Archive 1

Please reorder this list chronologically
As it is, this list is arranged by body count, which I believe is an unhealthy way to order the incidents. Rather than encourage a scoreboard approach, a more neutral representation would be to display the incidents chronologically. I'm sure wikipedia doesn't want to encourage this behavior in any way, no matter how small. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.102.214.139 (talk) 16:59, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree, for several reasons. It's hard to imagine the existence of this 'body count ranking' being the decisive factor in determining whether someone launches another rampage. Also, the list is going to exist, whether Wikipedia presents it or not; it's not difficult for anyone to come up with such a list themselves. Since the information exists, we may as well present it, since it's what people come to this article looking for. Maybe it is a bit morbid or tasteless, but the fact is that when a new massacre occurs, people want to know where it fits into the historical record, and we're providing that perspective. Robofish (talk) 23:40, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed, it should be ordered by date by default, not a body count scoreboard. The two date columns should be combined into a single date column that can be ordered.  As it is, you can order by year, but it's still not in chronological order.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justanothervisitor (talk • contribs) 15:21, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You can get a chronological order by first sorting by date, then by year, though it seems reasonable to change it so you can get it sorted in one click instead of two. Regarding the 'scoreboard' approach I've stated my opinion here already. (Lord Gøn (talk) 16:36, 15 December 2012 (UTC))
 * Oh well, I just made a test to make the years sort chronologically in one click, though I realized that you'd be stuck with a sorting from Dec-Jan if you have the most recent cases on top, while with the two-click approach you can either have Jan-Dec or Dec-Jan. I'm not sure what to do now. (Lord Gøn (talk) 17:17, 15 December 2012 (UTC))
 * Comment I'm not sure if this is functionally exactly what you're looking for, but how about adding the year (yyyy) into the hidden part of the date column (yyyy.mm.dd)? It ties the date to the year column and you wouldn't have to think about multiple sort factors. Only thing that you loose is a chance to sort the full table by month. --Sk4170 (talk) 21:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Problem is, I find myself very often sorting only by month to see if these things occur more freqeuently in some of them. Furthermore with that yyyy.mm.dd dating convention, you would be stuck with a sorting from Dec-Jan if you have the most recent cases shown on top, and at least I prefer it when they are sorted from Jan-Dec. (Lord Gøn (talk) 21:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC))


 * I think there's a way to sort dates using the features described in meta:Help:Sorting.. that would involve merging the two columns, and adding a bit of markup to each entry; it would lose the ability to sort things by month.. but is that really such a loss? I think most readers would rather be able to sort by date with one click. Mlm42 (talk) 22:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you get the Jan-Dec with that if sorted by the year also in descending order? I think that there are too many contradicting demands for the sort to tackle right now. What the users need is simplicity. Sort by full date would be just that. --Sk4170 (talk) 22:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The easiest way to sort it purely by date is as described Help:Sorting; I think you just add data-sort-type="date" to the column heading, and then it should sort dates like "14 Dec 2012" automatically.. or even the format "Dec 14, 2012" appears acceptable, as long as every entry in the column is formatted the same way. Mlm42 (talk) 13:21, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think that any of these solutions retains the possibility to sort descending by year, and ascending by month and day. What I see there is pretty much the same I've tried already.(Lord Gøn (talk) 18:45, 16 December 2012 (UTC))
 * Maybe I'm missing something, but why would the reader want to order it like that? Mlm42 (talk) 20:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Reading convention, personal preference maybe. At least I prefer things sorted that way, so I suspect there might be others. (Lord Gøn (talk) 20:27, 16 December 2012 (UTC))
 * Just to be clear, you prefer lists in the order (1) Dec 1, 2011, (2) Jan 1, 2011, (3) Dec 1, 2012, (4) Jan 1, 2012...?? ..? Doesn't that mess with your head? Mlm42 (talk) 21:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What? No, I prefer it this way: Jan. 1, 2012 - Dec. 31, 2012 - Jan. 1, 2011 - Dec. 31, 2011 etc., but with the proposed changes you'd be stuck with: Dec, 31, 2012 - Jan. 1, 2012 - Dec. 31, 2011 - Jan. 1, 2011 etc. (Lord Gøn (talk) 21:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC))
 * Your way still messes with my head. You have Dec. 31, 2012 followed directly by Jan. 1, 2011, when those two days are actually nearly two full years apart. And Dec 31, 2011 is really far away from Jan. 1, 2012, which is actually the next day! Mlm42 (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but it seems unnatural to me to begin at the end of a year than work yourselves to the beginning; so I prefer to have each year sorted from Jan to Dec, even though I'm working myself further into history with every year. (Lord Gøn (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC))

Oakland Elementary School
Why is this not listed?

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/30/us/second-victim-dies-after-school-shooting-incident.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.41.180.33 (talk) 02:13, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * As far as I can recall two people were killed in that shooting, and eight or nine others wounded, so it fails the terms of inclusion for this list.. (Lord Gøn (talk) 15:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC))


 * how do you gage someone's intent? Wilson intended to kill more but was stopped. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.37.171.28 (talk) 15:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)


 * What he intended to do is irrelevant in the context of this list, since we cannot know for sure what goes on in somebody's mind. All that counts here is what has happened, not what was supposed to happen, otherwise we would be left with a lot of guesswork, and that is not what an encyclopedia is for. Also, there are many many cases where people set out to kill a lot more people than they actually did, either because they had a change of mind, or were stopped somehow; we can't really add them all and write something like: killed 1, injured 2, wanted to kill more. (Lord Gøn (talk) 16:10, 18 December 2012 (UTC))

Concordia University massacre
The Concordia University massacre (Montreal, 1992) appears to be missing from the list. Perhaps it belongs under workplace killings but it doesn't seem to be listed there either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.44.74.119 (talk) 20:05, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * With four people killed and one wounded the shooting is not included in this list. (Lord Gøn (talk) 15:45, 15 December 2012 (UTC))


 * By the way, why are the criteria as they are? My vague impression is that 5 killed and 4 injured is more notable than 0 killed and 10 injured, but only the latter meets the criteria. What's the thinking on this? Mlm42 (talk) 10:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, when starting the list it was soon obvious that some sort of limit had to be set what could be included and what not, otherwise the number of entries would be many times what it is now. If you mind taking a look here, you can see that about half of the cases listed are sixfold murders, and from my experience I would say that fivefold murders are at least twice as common as sixfold murders, so it seems reasonable, to me at least, to say that six people killed is one threshold, because they are on the one hand not that common, while on the other hand media coverage is also decent enough for cases that happened 50 or 100 years ago, as well as for cases that occurred in non-western countries. But of course you cannot simply discount every case that has less than six people dead, as there are quite a few notable cases with less victims than that, so I arbitrarily set another threshold for cases with a double digit number of victims. Later on I found that international reporting about cases with less than four people killed is severely lacking if the number of victims isn't quite high, so I put the bar higher for these cases, and it's now twelve victims total.
 * So, the terms of inclusion are certainly a bit arbitrary (and no matter what you do, they will always be), but are also a result of international reporting standards, because cases with a low number of victims rarely get a lot of media coverage and are therefore easy to be overlooked. The TOI, as they are now, seem to do a fair enough job to keep recentism and western bias at bay, while also reducing the number of new entries to a point where it is not to be expected that the list gets flooded by a swarm of new entries every year. At one point I've played with the thought to apply a different, stricter system where the threshold would gradually increase the less people were killed, but that seemed too much like a point system awarding people for killing others, and the lists of familicides would've become a lot shorter that way, so I did not implement it. (Lord Gøn (talk) 15:08, 19 December 2012 (UTC))


 * I see. Yes, the western bias is difficult to overcome in these worldwide lists, due to a lack of good sources. So I agree it makes sense to have pretty strict criteria. I guess the OP was confused because they saw the table ordered by the number killed, and it went all the way down to zero, giving the impression that in fact every incident had been listed.


 * Since the title of the article is about "rampage killers: School massacres", it seems a little odd to include incidents where nobody actually died. Maybe it would make more sense to list only the incidents where at least six people died? Or split it into two different lists, and order the second one by number of victims? Mlm42 (talk) 16:13, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * A lot of people seem to get confused by the "killers" who have killed nobody, and I've had to explain it several times over the years why they are included, so you excuse me, if I say that it grows a little bit tiresome to explain the same thing over and over (maybe I should finally spare some time to finish the FAQ so I don't have to do it again). Anyway, just so much, this list is not as much about "rampage killers" (which might seem odd, since it's in the title of the list), as it is about "Amokläufer", a German word used to describe people who embark on a shooting/stabbing/hacking/whatever spree with the intent to harm or kill as many people as possible. The thing is that you don't have to kill anybody to be an "Amokläufer". Unfortunately the English language has no word that is an exact equivalent to it, and the closest you can get is "rampage killer". I have struggled quite a bit to find a title for the list that is uncontroversial, but there is none, and I've had many discussions about this, when it was still named "List of mass murderers and spree killers", but no matter what title I'd use to explain what this list is about, it would be subject to complaints. Not even the experts seem to know what word or phrase to apply to describe these cases, as you can see in the many variants that are circulating, such as pseudocommando (Dietz), autogenic massacre (Mullen), mass public shooting (Duwe), or sudden mass assault by a single individual/SMASI (Hempel/Meloy). (Lord Gøn (talk) 17:39, 19 December 2012 (UTC))


 * Well, terminology aside, the list is confusing because it's essentially a merge of two distinct lists. (1) Incidents with the most deaths, and (2) Incidents with the most victims. The ones with the most victims are then (confusingly) sorted by most deaths. So I think if you want to keep these separate criteria, then you could have two separate lists: (1) Incidents with the most killed, sorted by number killed, and (2) Incidents with the most victims, sorted by the number of victims. Then it would be obvious why other incidents (such as the Concordia massacre) are not listed. Mlm42 (talk) 08:55, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Melee weapon
This is apparently a neologism, unique to d&d. i dont think it helps that this list uses that term to group these weapons together, no matter how useful it may be.(mercurywoodrose)99.157.206.37 (talk) 03:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Hm, I didn't know that. Though I don't see any problem with the fact that the term originates from D&D, as long as it is part of common English and is widely understood, which seems to be the case. (Lord Gøn (talk) 02:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC))

Perpetrator name format
In order to get a better sort by the Perpetrator column, the name format should be last name, first name. This won't work with multiple perps for one incident, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.208.77.49 (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The format already is last name - first name. The only exceptions are cases from countries where western naming conventions don't apply, such as the middle east, where a clearcut last name seems to be rare. Then there are some Asian countries, where the last name is commonly mentioned first no matter what. So, I don't see any reason to divide all the Chinese names with commas, because Chinese naming conventions already make it clear enough that the last name is the one that comes first. (Lord Gøn (talk) 01:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC))

For the Asian names it is clear only if someone knows the convention. Using a comma makes it consistent and clear. Some names were first-last. The format error is easier to spot if all correctly formatted names have a comma. For Middle Eastern names, the sources may provide guidance. I don't agree that just saying that it's too hard to figure out is a good excuse not to put the family name first. There is no reason to split a name over multiple lines. This list is long and growing. Putting the foreign name on one line makes the format more compact. 75.208.114.243 (talk) 18:44, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The fact that some people don't know how Chinese write their names is no reason to apply Western naming conventions on them. Anybody who's left baffled by the order, or lack of commas between last and first name, can look it up easily on this very page; after all, learning something new is the whole point of an encyclopedia.
 * Regarding Ala Hisham Abu Dheim, I think it is very far fetched to say that Abu Dheim is his last name, since Abu simply means "father of", which makes his name Ala Hisham, father of Dheim, and that latter part does not look like a last name to me. And just because Western media often constructs a last name out of thin air, e.g. in the case of Ajmal Kasab, to adhere to Western naming conventions that demand a last name to exist, does not mean, Arabic names actually have one. You may take a look here or here for more info.
 * The only name where Western naming conventions could be applied, but is written first - last name nonetheless is the Kyrillic version of Sergei Lepnev. It could be debated if it's better to be consistent and show the name the same way its Latin transliteration appears in.
 * The †-footnote already means something else in List of rampage killers: Home intruders, while a ° is consistently applied throughout the lists to indicate that a relative of the perpetrator was among the victims.
 * In the add. notes the outcome for the perp. is always mentioned first, so that all cases where the perp. was arrested, sentenced, committed suicide, etc. are grouped together when sorting the table by that column. (Lord Gøn (talk) 18:30, 17 February 2013 (UTC))

'Abu Dheim' being the family name is clearly supported by the news articles which I do not consider to be "Western". It is obvious that your rules lead to sorting by first name (or other than by surname).

Pinyan name should be on same line as Latinized version
Naming conventions (Chinese) clearly shows the pinyin version on the same line. 75.210.226.254 (talk) 08:25, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Location should include name of institution(s) where rampage occurred
Many times people are looking for the name of a school and won't know the name of the city or the name of the killers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.208.77.49 (talk) 21:53, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

But creating a individual column named school would be better !! Frozenprakash (talk) 17:06, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Criteria for number killed - too low
Is the criteria really just at lest 2 killed. because if it is there should be way more cases included than there are now. This list seems to be exempt from the six killed rule.


 * You're right - someone had added a different criteria. The definition of rampage killer and criteria, as defined at List of rampage killers, were added to the top of the page, as they should be for each sub-page.Parkwells (talk) 14:05, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Chardon H.S.
I added details relevant to the Chardon High School shooting. Another editor reverted the addition, with the reason that there were "not enough victims". I was not aware of a minimum number of victims in a "school massacre"; however, in this case, 3 were killed, 3 were wounded. As there are plenty of crimes listed here in which there were zero fatalities. How does the Chardon H.S. incident fail to qualify? Boneyard90 (talk) 16:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This list is, as the introduction says, part of the List of rampage killers, which means that the same terms of inclusion are applied here. They read as follows:
 * This list shall contain every case with at least one of the following features:
 * Mass murder cases with six or more dead (excluding the perpetrator)
 * Mass murder cases with a double digit number of victims (dead plus injured)
 * Mass murders by intention with at least a dozen victims (dead plus injured)
 * (The definition of mass murder applied here is: murder of four or more persons within a rather short period.)
 * The Chardon High School shooting doesn't meet any of these criteria and therefore should not be included. (Lord Gøn (talk) 17:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC))
 * Ah, I understand now. But what about all those listed with zero fatalities? Do they count as "mass murders by intention"? Boneyard90 (talk) 00:56, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly. For a little bit more info about the term "mass murders by intention" I may refer you to the book Flash Point by Michael Kelleher. (See Chapter 1, pages 2 and 3, Defining Mass Murder) (Lord Gøn (talk) 03:32, 3 March 2012 (UTC))
 * I gotta say, that kind of rationale is... well, it doesn't make alot of sense to me. Someone can intend to kill alot of people, but only wound them, then he or she will be called a "rampage killer" and "mass murderer", even though nobody was actually killed? Makes me think: Worst - killer - ever. But you have a reference, so I'm not going to debate the issue. HOWEVER, to avoid this kind of confusion in the future, I suggest adding the definition and list of criteria to the top of the page, lead or first section of text, and to all the List of rampage killer sub-pages. Also, add the book reference as an in-line citation at the beginning and/or end of the list of criteria. Boneyard90 (talk) 07:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Good suggestion to add the definition and criteria to this article and every related sub-page of List of rampage killers. This was going way off.Parkwells (talk) 14:47, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Baumgartner, Travis Brandon
I suggest moving this entry to the Workplace rampage killer article for the following reasons:

While this event occurred on the campus of the University of Alberta, the perpetrator nor the victims were students or teachers. All five involved persons were employees of an Armored Truck service that were onsite delivering cash to an ATM, when Baumgartner executed his coworkers and stole the cash (as well as the armored truck). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianrance (talk • contribs) 01:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be moved to workplace because it doesn't meet the six fatalities criteria but it still happened at a school I guess.WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It does not fit the criteria on this list, nor on workplace rampage killings. It's an ordinary robbery.Parkwells (talk) 14:54, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Edited list to conform to criteria
The following events did not meet the criteria as defined in this article, which repeats the master article, List of rampage killers. I do not think they should be included, as the list will soon be meaningless. I have to renumber the list in this article, as numbers did not automatically change. Parkwells (talk) 15:07, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

End of deletions that do not meet criteria for listing in this article.Parkwells (talk) 15:18, 15 October 2015 (UTC)