Talk:Street fighting

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Neutrality
"Other evidence indicates that many of the recent violent conflicts between peaceful, legal protesters and police are the work of "agent provocateurs" working for the police or even policemen themselves. Dressed as a protester and usually masked, police provocateurs commit violence such as throwing bottles at police, or rocks through windows or even committing arson. The police use these acts by provocateurs as an excuse to march on otherwise peaceful protesters, with batons, horses and tear gas. Video has identified police officers, in one case by their SWAT issued police boots, at several protests acting in this capacity. Canadian police have admitted one "protester" with a rock and a bandanna tied around his face was in fact a police officer. The video shows a burly guy with a crew cut handling a hefty rock and trying to throw it at police while real protesters try and stop him. The Canadian police insist he was there to stop any violence with his rock."

I'm no great fan of the police, but this has got to be one of the more slanted pieces of writing on Wikipedia. Any sources, or are we just throwing arbitrary rants into articles now? The fact that the authour cites a video which they haven't even bothered to link, suggests to me this is bullshit. NLI, 6/8/09 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.239.159.6 (talk) 13:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

"Youtube Fights"
Really? Give me a break. I'm removing this unless there is some documented phenomenon Mylakovich (talk) 11:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks like it's still there Brohammed.24.9.166.18 (talk) 02:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Havent you seen how so many school kids are fighting and uploading. Its an epidemic! Portillo (talk) 06:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be better covered in the page Happy slapping? --Daniel Cull (talk) 06:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There are more than a few videos of street fighting on YouTube, but even as a whole they don't seem culturally significant. Maybe something more general? Fedoragirl (talk) 06:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed
The neutrality of this article is disputed. At the moment, it's merely an anti-police rant. -- The Anome 09:35, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * What is this drivel all about? Ditch it I say!  User:Big Jim Fae Scotland


 * Neutrality or lack thereof aside, this article's got a lot of good information in it. It should be refined and edited rather than deleted. Bryan 09:22, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * This page now seriously lacks real information. User: Masssiveego


 * This page is alot of shit. It's alot of dubious statements, like victims of muggings won't stand a chance in a fight. That's speculation, not fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.194.106 (talk • contribs)

Definition of street fight
I was going to complain that by "street fight" we mean small street fight, having only a few participants. But what do you call large street fights between two (or more) factions? If governments or government-like things are involved, it's war, revolt or revolution. But the new text cites examples where this is not the case (and the Irish faction fights qualify too).

Nevertheless, big street fights are different from small street fights. Martial artists have little interest in the former, while historians have little interest in the latter. Also the big fights section is much better written. I'm going to go ahead and put them in a different section. --Andrew 07:56, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

Edit conflict
Sorry about the edit conflict! I'll stay away for a while... --Andrew 08:48, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

Deletion of article
I second Big Jim's recommendation to delete this article. Unfounded statements such as "The most common factor in street fights is drunkenness" and informalities such as "Of course, when drunk people spill out of nightclubs, the bouncers do not follow" have no place in scholarly writing. The entire article seems to be based on the author's anecdotal experience with the topic.

On a broader note, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit," not that "anyone should edit." I would encourage potential editors/authors to make an honest assessment of their qualification to write encyclopedia articles before doing so. A strong grasp of formal writing is a prerequisite. 64.231.204.49 02:57, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I came to this article expecting an article on Street Fighting, people fighting unofficially for sport or money. Instead I found an article on people fighting in the street....delete this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.186.22 (talk • contribs)


 * Erm, bullet. Jasca Ducato 12:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this is an important topic, though obviously not a very well written article. I have written a whole e-book on the topic and if I have a chance will clean it up.  Remember that the Nazis rose through the conscious tactic of street fighting.  And that it was a tactic rejected by leftists in this country through the 1980s and 1990s until re-adopted after the 1999 Seattle "riots."
 * Carol Moore 04:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc


 * personally i think this is rather alot of shit because this does not tell you what you need to know just stuff about legal street fighting not the real stuff like people fighting in a circle for money.. so personally i think this is a load of bullshit! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrsmanson666 (talk • contribs)


 * This article talks about fighting in the media more than what people have come to expect from an article about fighting itself. I'm taking it upon myself to make this an article about street fighting in general


 * Also, when I'm done, please contribute. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weightofair (talk • contribs)


 * There, I got this started. If anyone doesn't like the definition, go to www.dictionary.com. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weightofair (talk • contribs)

Urgent Re-write Required
As it stands, this page is awful. It contains woeful English, childish and unencyclopaedic material and stark irrelevencies to the topic. Can anyone salvage this? Should it be salvaged? Blaise Joshua 13:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * You spelled "irrelevancies" wrong, and "unencyclopaedic" is not a word.... I rushed through this article but I'm fixing it now. It is now an article about anything related to street fighting instead of just violence in the media.  It's also difficult to make this encyclopedic cause there's no written law when it comes to street fighting so if someone could help me out on that, I'd be very thankful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weightofair (talk • contribs)


 * You're quite right about the typo on irrelevancies, but I would dispute that 'unencyclopaedic' isn't a real word. You did seem to understand me well enough, though. However, all of this is yet another irrelevancy to the article - I assume in good faith that you're just attempting to be helpful, and I'm much obliged. However, your assertion that there being no written law on street fighting making it difficult to make the article encyclopaedic is, I believe, false. There's no written law on, say, skateboarding, but it hasn't prevented an article being produced that is considerably more encyclopaedic than the one found here. Blaise Joshua 13:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * OK ... nothing's been suggested, so I'm going to put over a few things that I believe need attention in the article's opening:


 * 1) Street fighter - the opening definition, apart from being unsourced and waffle, is odd as the article is actually on street fighting.
 * 2) Street fighting - this definition is just as bad. Firstly, it says it's spontaneous, but then talks about organised "pit fights". The sentence "This violence is intended to end in a number of ways" is vague, uninformative and pointless. Also, the point that the lack of control in street fighting means it can result in death is, again, ridiculous. Boxing is a controlled sport and that can result in death.
 * 3) Lack of sources / references - as you will all see, I'm not an expert on this subject, but after reading the article I'm wondering if it really is an actual subject. If it is, and someone knows what they're talking (or writing) about, can we get some actual references to back up what is on here? Otherwise, it just looks like adolescent waffle. Blaise Joshua 15:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, I've attempted to improve the definition myself. Please, if anybody knows about this subject, please come forward. Blaise Joshua 14:01, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I give up
While I admit I suck at editing articles, I am pleased to announce the article is open for someone else to fix. I'm not fixing the parts about violence in the media though. Someone else do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weightofair (talk • contribs)


 * Wish I had the time to update the parts I'm familiar with since again it IS an important political topic in today's world, whatever one may think of the phenomena (and I'm not a big fan myself). Witness the "street fights" with cops just last week at the G8 Conference!! By the way at least some insights on the **organized political version** of street fighting can be read in my article RETURN OF STREET FIGHTING MAN  It probably would not be appropriate for me to link to it, but someone else can.  Or maybe I just will anyway as one of many references. In fact there's a few things I could link to. When I get a chance.
 * Carol Moore 16:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Changes to First Two Sections
OK, I started cleaning up this mess, starting with the first two sections, deleting a lot of verbiage, tightening things up.

I don't think pit fighting belongs here since it's more a quasi-commercial illegal sport, like cockfighting. Unless I hear some rousing defense of it, will delete all references.

"In the media" as a section title makes no sense. I think we need to more clearly differentiate between SPONTANEOUS and ORGANIZED street fights which is what the "media" and "faction" sections seem to be about. Noting that obviously it only takes a couple organized people to promote a "spontaneous" fight. Or some other obvious differentiation. Will think about it.

Finally there should be a reference to the avid interest in street fighting video games, videos and manuals etc. to show that this is a social phenomena. Carol Moore 15:55, 22 June 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Re-Wrote The Page - Feel Free to Add Examples and References!
I mostly reorganized it more rationally, cleaned up excess verbiage, added a few more examples. But it still needs more examples and more references, which I'll do at some point. Feel free to research and add some, now that the organization isn't so chaotic. Also, might add a social psychology of street fights section at some point since have a lot of referenced material on that, but not til add other references and referenced material. Carol Moore 02:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Street Fighting Article Socio-Political More Than Martial arts
Someone added "Start-Class Martial arts articles" which does not reflect over all thrust of article which is more socio-political that a martial arts page. It should probably be added to sociology category.

The original writers actually specifically excluded use of martial arts in street fighting which I think went to far in one direction. I'm working on another version which admits possibility of using martial arts in a limited fashion, since I'm sure people do and it seems arbitrary to exclude them. So article probably could use a section on martial arts if related to actual people street fighting in the streets and not the kind in movies, video games, etc.

Carol Moore 03:25, 2 August 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc


 * The article is about fighting and while not primarily about marital arts it is related, boxing, kickboxing & wrestling listed in the first paragraph are all martial arts. --Nate1481(t/c) 10:33, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Your changes make sense. Just didn't want to see the non-marital arts features overwhelmed and the page becoming a martial arts page as the category might lead some to assume.
 * Carol Moore 17:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc


 * Fair enough, martial artists do get involved in street fights, there were news reports about some UFC fighters being attacked a while back, and several people I train with work as bouncers. The most likely problem is you will get a drive by advert about some martial art being "T3h d34dly 0n t3h 5r33t!". A section on progress and outcome etc would not be unreasonable, and would compliment the causes sections, but I don't have the time or sources to write any thing worth while right now the article seems to be partly on street fights partly on riots might be worth linking in there --Nate1481(t/c) 09:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I thought it was weird some original poster totally ruled out martial arts, and article does want to reflect reality. I actually am updating it offline with more references now. Not sure what you mean by "progress and outcome."

Also, does it need to be made more clear that the strategy of street fighting when used by political types and labor organizers -- or even sports fans -- may or may turn into a full blown riot? Obviously, there can be a thin line between the two, usually as more people join randomly and things become more chaotic and more property destruction, arson, happens. Like the Seattle "black bloc" property destruction of specific targets and attacks vs. cops, where locals started joining in "for fun" and police also began to riot, as well as some more activists, and part of the protests became a real riot. Carol Moore 14:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc


 * Sorry, "progress and outcome" is not all that clear, there is very little on what actual happens in the fights, dose it start with individuals pushing, or in large (street wars?) 'calling out the champions' where two 1 or two start fighting then others join in? or go straight in to an all on all, this will partly depend on the participants, but is largely not touched upon.
 * I admit I'm looking at this from the MA perspective in that I'm thinking of the actual fighting bit rather than the back ground to why fight. One of the common things I've heard anecdotally, but believe is true, is that in 1-on-1 'drunken brawl' type situation it start with insults & the first punch is aimed at the mouth in a 'shut-up' mentality. --Nate1481(t/c) 15:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * As a separate note, I'd just like to mention that care should be taken that this article does not begin to overlap with Riot. Bradford44 15:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Street fighting in popular culture?
The article mentions briefly games that depict street fighting, but perhaps there should be a section on games and movies (such as West Side Story) in which it features. Thoughts? 211.30.131.91 01:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Personally I would say go for it. Read through talk since it seems others might have wanted clearer divide in past. But if they don't pipe up now with their objections, I see no problem. thanks for asking! :-)
 * Carol Moore 13:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Useful book
Anyone who wants to add citations and more material to this page should take a look at Streetfighters by Julian Davies. It contains accounts of streetfighting from a fair number of fighters, ranging in styles from bare-knuckle boxing (esp gypsy fighters) to bouncing and bar-brawling. Here's its page on Amazon  almost - instinct 13:00, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * PS Its a British book; all the subjects are resident in UK. However, it has been published in the US  almost - instinct 13:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

"While street fighting as an actual activity is relatively rare" Excuse me? Rare? Under what ridiculous definition are street fights rare? Was the author thinking of his own little corner of the world? I suggest that the article should either cite specific statistics (e.g. in Town A streetfights occur at an average rate of 50 per year, according to police statistics) or not use qualitative words like "rare", "common", "(in)frequent". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.54.224 (talk) 07:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Changing Page Format
The current page does have useful information, but as the layout and organization of the content may need work, I propose the following layout for the page and may implement it in the next few weeks if nobody has any objections.

=Street Fighting= ==Background== ==Street Fighting and Martial Arts== Types of martial arts used in street fighting. Organized and competitive aspects of street fighting. ==Gangs== Street fighting and violence between gangs. Hyperlinks to appropriate articles. ==Street Fighting and Political Movements== A few notes on revolution and social movements where violence in the streets has become an issue.

Much of the information from the existing article could be brought into these categories, and they are the categories I think would be most useful. Ideas? Fedoragirl (talk) 06:08, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It does need a reorganisation a 'motivations' and a reporting section would help. "street figting & martial arts" is a whole can of worms, many/any are tried but this will lead to lots of people trying to say there's is the best for it. -- Natet/c 11:55, 5 January 2010

Articles for deletion/Street fighting
As most watchers of this page will know this AfD is now closed and the overwhelming response was keep. As I expressed in that AfD though, my concern is that this is still a very poor article, full of what looks like WP:OR and incorrect information and is almost completely unreferenced. Since so many editors want to keep it, who will volunteer to take on the job of removing the OR and incorrect information, expanding it and finding refs for the retained text? - Ahunt (talk) 13:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I suppose the total lack of response here shouldn't be a surprise, as I forecast that in the AfD. I would like to propose that this article be edited as proposed by User:Yoninah in the AfD, who said: "This article reads like OR from beginning to end. While it is an extremely notable subject, I agree with Ahunt that we can't just leave it and wait for someone else to insert references to match all the assertions. Are any of us prepared to take the time to do that? On the other hand, we can't delete it entirely, or else someone will probably come up with a new post that looks just as rough as this one. I suggest leaving the first paragraph and deleting the rest, with a wiki note on the editing page that warns people to reference whatever they're going to say. This might be unconventional, but maybe it will solve the problem here." If there are objections to this proposal please state them. I will leave this a few days to see if anyone has any thoughts on this. - Ahunt (talk) 20:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It looks like User:Simonm223 has taken that task on and reduced the article! - Ahunt (talk) 21:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Stubbing is the appropriate course of action when a notable topic has no refs. Simonm223 (talk) 22:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * No criticism intended at all - as you can tell from above we were heading that way anyway - you just sped things up, which is greatly appreciated! - Ahunt (talk) 23:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Images
These images would be a good illustration of street fighting, but I am not sure if the licence permits putting them on wikipedia. More info about the source can be found here.

The image shown in the current version of this article looks more like some guys having fun training than a real fight.

Niky cz (talk) 04:19, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that those are better images, but they are copyrighted and so cannot be used on Wikipedia. The one I put into the article was the best one I found on Commons, but if anyone can substitute a better free image that would be great. I am certainly not attached to the image in the article right now, but I thought a photo would help dress up the article a bit. Of interest a search for "street fight" images on commons picks up about 90% scenes of fighting in streets during events such as the Battle of Stalingrad. The military use of the term refers to warfare in urban areas and is very different from what we have in this article and we should probably add a section on that. - Ahunt (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * My solution to the military term was to add a link to Urban warfare on Street Fight, which is the general disambiguation page on this subject area. - Ahunt (talk) 15:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Problem of the article: it tries to follow the term's narrow definition by a late 20th century phenomenon
The article has the same problem as many articles about general terms: it was written by people who arbitrarily follow the terminology of some minor subcultural scene, here, the martial arts scene. And that's just because you have got nothing else to rely upon. While of course there are differences between social phenomenons like brawl, free fight, affair of honour, duel, self defense situation, assault, hooliganism, urban riot and urban warfare, the differentiation between the terms used here is in no way sociological founded. It's obviously taken from some special interest magazine for the practioners of a certain hobby. Outside martial arts fanzines, a street fight is just a (physical) fight on the street. For now the whole article appears to be a pretty ridiculous attempt that doesn't represent many common definitions of the term in any way. If people don't want to delete this article, they will have to work on it with much more sources and from a wider perspective. Otherwise they'll have this nasty childish thing in Wikipedia. (On the other hand it's funny to think that someone could stumble across that photo in the article Battle of Stalingrad, which shows a scene of urban warfare and is described by "A street fight in Stalingrad", and that this someone might think the picture depicted a couple of martial artists who agreed to have a bare handed affair of honour.) --JakobvS (talk) 21:08, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * While you make some very good points here, expanding the scope of the article relies on references. - Ahunt (talk) 13:15, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Laws about and regulation of street fighting
This article should make some mention of the law concerning fighting in the street and other similar public places. In many jurisdictions, it is against the law to fight in a public place, while organised fights are often subject to various forms of regulation and control. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 12:00, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * It can be added, but we need references to do that. Any sources? - Ahunt (talk) 13:00, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Biological?
Under "biological" it states that human jaw muscles have "evolved" to protect the mandible, and that human teeth have "evolved" to become larger and thicker.

However, over hundreds of thousands of years human musculoskeletal structure has evolved to be generally less muscular with much lighter bones and smaller teeth. Joe Eggett (talk) 17:19, 14 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The claims in the text are sourced to WP:RS. - Ahunt (talk) 17:50, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * So, the source material for those claims was talking about pre-Hominins and early Hominin species, including the earliest species of Homo. It is true that the modern Homo Sapien has a more gracile frame as compared to archaic humans, and the source material does make mention of that. I've edited the "biological" section to be less conclusive in phrasing as the source material article, while well-argued and well written, is still theoretical in nature. Soldier198 (talk) 22:09, 7 January 2023 (UTC)