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:IMO the problem(s) are with the linked article.[[User:Pincrete|Pincrete]] ([[User talk:Pincrete|talk]]) 06:50, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
:IMO the problem(s) are with the linked article.[[User:Pincrete|Pincrete]] ([[User talk:Pincrete|talk]]) 06:50, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
::There is a discussion pertinent to this at: [[Talk:June_2017_London_Bridge_attack#Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe_.282014.E2.80.93present]]. --[[User:TBM10|TBM10]] ([[User talk:TBM10|talk]]) 19:47, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
::There is a discussion pertinent to this at: [[Talk:June_2017_London_Bridge_attack#Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe_.282014.E2.80.93present]]. --[[User:TBM10|TBM10]] ([[User talk:TBM10|talk]]) 19:47, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Perpetrator

An editor (WWGB) has claimed in an edit summary that word "perpetrator" is not used in British English and substituted the word "assailant". The BBC News service have used the term perpetrator (and attacker) for this terrorist attack and the more recent vehicular attack in Stockholm. I have not heard or read the word "assailant" used in this context. I think lots of UK editors have been editing or watching this article, so it is unlikely at this stage that there are systematic errors of this kind in the article. Mathsci (talk) 07:07, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Assailant doesnt seem right to me from a British point of view and would expect the more usual attacker to be used for a UK article, perpetrator would be seen as an Americanism. MilborneOne (talk) 07:55, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with WWGB and MilbourneOne. Although the word is present in British dictionaries, it definitely carries an American flavour. - The Bounder (talk) 12:27, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Perpetrator seems acceptable to me, since a lot of Americanisms have entered the British language. The classic one is jail vs gaol, both of which are used (though it tends to be the former rather than the latter). Assailant doesn't seem right to me. It would be appropriate in the context of a robbery, mugging, etc, but not here. We can't even use the term suspect in this case. This is Paul (talk) 12:34, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It is not better (and arguably worse) than "attacker". Just because lazy journalists use Americanisms, that should not affect the formal encyclopaedic English for which we are aiming. – The Bounder (talk) 12:37, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Also thessaurus.com (which I always find helpful when writing) doesn't list assailant as an alternative for perpetrator. I don't think any of the other terms there would work either. This is Paul (talk) 12:40, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@The Bounder: Attacker or offender are probably the two most usable words. This is Paul (talk) 12:42, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Attacker is closest to common Brit Eng, I find "assailant" strange and as US as 'perp', we understand all these words but they are not the "default terms". Attacker has the advantage of simplicity - a murder is done by a murderer, an attack by an attacker, why make it more complicated? Pincrete (talk) 17:35, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We had a long wrangle (now archived) as to the exact model of car used in the attack, and the main article tells us that it was a "grey Hyundai Tucson." I was able to work out, from newspaper accounts of his birth, that the driver was a Kentish Man rather than a Man of Kent, but that vital distinction has been obscured to merely saying that he was "born in Kent." NRPanikker (talk) 18:41, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A "vital distinction"? Sorry, I just think it is pompous nonsense. What does his crime have to do with the side of the river on which he was born? WWGB (talk) 03:48, 11 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

London attacks again

In light of this shouldn't it rather be disambiguated with the month in which this occured?Walsak (talk) 23:08, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The newer attack is not Westminster (London Bridge/Borough Market).Pincrete (talk) 08:48, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
True, but it would make sense to move this to March 2017 London attack. There's no sense in using the area in the title of this one, but the month on the other. Jim Michael (talk) 19:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
support mentioning month. Many different google search lead to one or the other first, a month in the title would make which attack is which clearer, particularly to those whose London geo knowledge is vauge.Icewhiz (talk) 19:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Permanent naming on other attack is still undecided, with possibility of 'London Bridge' rather than month. Westminster and London Bridge are both fairly well known worldwide. Bear in mind that 'London' is bigger and more populous than some countries. Pincrete (talk) 20:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Considering this article also starts with an attack on a bridge in London, namely Westminister bridge, that would be ambiguous for people who are not well versed in London's different bridges.Icewhiz (talk) 21:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Should we open a move request or RfC? Jim Michael (talk) 22:02, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Use of the noun "attack" to describe the event

This discussion has been moved to WP:VPM#Use of the word "attack" in various article titles in order to have all 20-30 discussions in one place. Please go there to participate. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:00, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

I have questions about the widespread use of the noun "attack" to describe this event. These questions similarly concern other accounts of violence where the use of the word "attack" seems related to the country of origin or religion of the alleged perpetrator or perpetrators. I will therefore try to raise this concern elsewhere as well. (For this reason, please bear with me if you see this comment elsewhere and it seems repetitive.)

My concern is roughly as follows. First, calling such an incident an attack uses the register of war to characterize the event. (Consider for example the widespread use of the expression _armed attack_ in the UN Charter and in other instruments treating the laws of war.) This is a very specific move and seems to me to be one of consequence in our understanding of such an event. This is to say that the use of war as an animating backdrop into which to integrate our understanding of the event is a very specific choice, and by no means the only option at our disposal. Using the noun "attack" and the backdrop of war to characterize an individual event assimilates it to the plane of collective action. Assimilating an individual act to wider collective action is a very specific interpretive choice, and one that is not disinterested. For example, characterization of an event as a crime does not generally carry the suggestion of collective action. It might be objected that characterizing such an event as a crime is not apt because of the apparent political motivation of the violence considered. Options other than imposing a frame of either war or collective action onto our understand of an event are nonetheless available. Consider our understanding of the Oklahoma City bombing or the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, for example. No one doubts the political motivation underlying either event, yet our understanding of neither of these events is animated by the suggestion of either war or collective action more generally. If it is wished to indicate a wider conspiracy underlying an individual event, such a conspiracy should be indicated explicitly, not by means of suggestion or innuendo. In a dispassionate account with ambitions of being held out as a reliable encyclopedia article, collective action should be demonstrated by the evidence provided. Collective action should not be an unsubstantiated, hollow spectre that looms over every corner of such an account.

Second, even in the case that collective action--specifically, war--is chosen and adopted as the animating register for the discussion of this event, "attack" is a particularly odd choice in characterizing it. To repeat what's already stated above, both war--and more generally, collective action--are specific interpretative choices for our understanding of this event, neither is obvious or necessary. If such an interpretative choice is adopted, such a choice should be explicit and, ideally, demonstrated by the evidence--deserving a discussion of its own. Now, in the case that collective action and war is chosen as a rubric in which to understand this event, "attack" carries an added suggestion. "Attack" suggests the initiation of hostilities. Once again the claim being made is not explicit, but is glossed over by means of suggestion and innuendo. Again, one suspects that the claim comes by way of suggestion and innuendo because it would collapse if it were made explicitly. The Pentagon and Whitehall began bombing Afghanistan in October 2001, Iraq in March 2003, Syria in September 2014, and Somalia since at least October 2016. French and affiliated NATO forces began their occupation of Afghanistan in December 2001, and of Libya in March 2011. (France has also announced a bombing campaign of the Sahel region in August 2014, that includes parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Ethiopia.) One is by no means obligated to understand an individual act of violence in the United States, UK, or France in the context of "war" that includes these military campaigns singularly or collectively; as already emphasized, taking such an act to be one of war is the result of a specific interpretive choice. However, in the case that this route is selected--and an act in the United States, Britain, or France is taken to be part of a war--it seems highly misleading to further portray such an act with an incipient or initiating flavor that "attack" suggests. This portrayal is again glossed over without discussion and seemingly counter to all evidence: if an individual event is understood as a collective action that is part of a wider war, using language that suggests or attributes an initiating character to such an event seems highly dubious when that event takes place 15+ years into the supposed war. Characterizing such an event as an attack seems to want it both ways: to push an account of the event as a collective action that is an act of war, and to at the same time avoid any discussion of that wider war ("attack" with its suggestion that t=0; as opposed to "response," usually reserved for justifications of the ensuring state-violence).

Use of the word "attack" to describe such an individual act thus seems to me highly incoherent. It is an interpretive choice that on the one hand suggests collective responsibility for an individual act of violence, and does so by means of innuendo rather than explicitly (for doing so explicitly would seem dubious in the absence of specific evidence that is often simply not there to be found). And on the other hand, substantive discussion of the wider war being suggested as the animating context in which the event occurs is avoided; "attack" carries with it the suggestion (again, pure innuendo unlikely to survive serious discussion) that the event has an initiating character, glossing over the possibility that such an event could be the response to something.

For these reasons, this word does not seem worthy to form the basis of a discussion which aims to be neutral or dispassionate. Rather it seems highly politicized, and on even a moment's inspection, a tendentious characterization that summarily assimilates an individual event to a collective act of war, while at the same time denying the continuity of the very war being supposed ("attack" bearing the suggestion that event initiates, rather than responds to anything). Moreover, one wonders if the term carries slanderous suggestions; the spectre of collective responsibility cast by the word seems particularly given to scapegoating. "Conspiracy theorist" is a term of derision often used to characterize the speculations of those that suppose collective action or a plot in the absence of good evidence. Well, in addition to its being unthinking newspeak--in its current, and now longstanding, uniform use--"attack" is nothing if not a term of the conspiracy theorist. Collective action is supposed in the absence of evidence. The fear-mongering of supposed collective action gives rise to the war-mongering of suggested collective responsibility.

The innuendo and spectres that one might expect to litter Pentagon briefings should not provide the basis for an encyclopedia article that aims to be disinterested. Alfred Nemours (talk) 15:19, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

'Attack' is the common name for an event of this kind which (broadly speaking) dictates our usage. The word is neither inherently collective, nor inherently militaristic (an attack on Naom Chomsky, is not likely to be either). How should this event be described in your opinion? Such that the language is neutral and informative. Pincrete (talk) 15:45, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your reply. But consider how the word is being used in the relevant context. If I raise caution about an account that claims to be fair and objective in advance of a trial in which an individual man accused of grisly violence is summarily described as a "savage," it might also be objected that "savage" can have many meanings, some of them positive. "Savage wit," it might be said, "means that someone is very smart." But clearly the article in characterizing such a man as a savage in advance of such a trial is not calling the accused man a genius.
Attack has an established meaning in international law. It at once (1) indicates an act of war and (2) attributes responsibility to the initiation of that war. It is certainly true that "attack" is used in other senses, among them figurative. ("An attack on Noam Chomsky" would indicate, for example, either a refutation of the views of Noam Chomsky, or a denunciation of the character of Noam Chomsky.) But I have never seen an example in English of the word "attack" coupled with a city or place where the word "attack" was not used in its international legal sense to (1) indicate a collective action, one of war, and (2) suggest responsibility for the initiation of such a war (usually in justification of ensuing military action, often deemed a "response"). Alfred Nemours (talk) 01:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You offer no alternative word for a series of non-specific (ie not shooting/bombing etc), or mixed, violent acts. Words like 'savage', 'barbaric' etc. are inherently evaluative, and would only be used by us as quotes. I am not persuaded that the word 'attack' inherently carries the associations you attach to it. It is simply IMO one of those words (like campaign?) whose precise meaning is established by context. Pincrete (talk) 07:32, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
like Stonewall Attack, and King's Indian Attack are clearly contrary to the Geneva Conventions. IdreamofJeanie (talk) 08:44, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above 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.

Part of a "campaign"?

Sure we have attributed statements supporting the speculation that this attack was related to Islamic extremism, but can we, within the bounds of Wikipedia policies (WP:NOR, WP:SYNTH, WP:V & co) support the assertion that it was also somehow part of an implied centrally coordinated or organised campaign of attacks across Europe which started in 2014? I propose removing links and association to this notion (including the article Islamic terrorism in Europe (2014–present)) until we have adequately attributed and reliably sourced confirmation that that is indeed the case, -- de Facto (talk). 06:40, 30 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

IMO the problem(s) are with the linked article.Pincrete (talk) 06:50, 30 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There is a discussion pertinent to this at: Talk:June_2017_London_Bridge_attack#Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe_.282014.E2.80.93present. --TBM10 (talk) 19:47, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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