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Talk:List of largest peaceful gatherings

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bob bobato (talk | contribs) at 16:39, 23 January 2017 (→Numbers cited for Arba'een). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Women's March on Washington

Women's March on Washington is likely a candidate for this page now. Victor Grigas (talk) 02:08, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Victorgrigas: I would have to confirm from the reliable sources but this page only lists gatherings with at least a million people, however the page for the march currently states that only half a million people gathered. Even if you factored in the number of people at the inauguration and included it as a "peaceful gathering" it would only be 750000 - 1100000. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:03, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The event was not localized, but simultaneous and distributed, is an event being centralized a necessity? Sources like VOX say it "may have been" one of the largest marches in US history: http://www.vox.com/2017/1/22/14350808/womens-marches-largest-demonstration-us-history-map Victor Grigas (talk) 01:27, 23 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We have always only allowed only incidents that occurred in one place in the past, but I do not see why. This edit by an IP removed that caveat and I am not inclined to restore it. In fact I have added another event that I removed earlier here. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 04:28, 23 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I undid the IP removal, as the number of people participating in an event does not mean the number of people who are gathered. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 13:17, 23 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Numbers cited for Arba'een

According to this page, over 30 million people attended the Arbaeen in Karbala, Iraq, in 2016. I seriously question this figure. This is a religious festival which is significant primarily for Shi'ite Muslims, who number about 300 million worldwide. Iraq itself only has a population of about 38 million. This means that for this figure to be true, about 10% of all Sh'ites will have attended this meeting, which, by the way, is located in a wartorn country. Karbala itself is near territory held by Daesh. Despite all that, the numbers have been growing every year, and were "only" 10 million in 2007.

Let's not even think about the logistics of having 30 million travel into a country for only one day. Mecca annually receives "only" about 2 million people for the Hajj, which it is only able to do due to the sophisticated infrastrure it has in place to prepare for large numbers, and even then there are often disasters stemming from people control.

It is believable for the Arba'een to involve many millions of people, but 30 million is far too much. The sources for the figures provided all come from less-reputable sources such as the Huffingtonpost, the IB Times, or religious organizations, which themselves give wildly different numbers (one says 40 million!). They generally do not support these numbers, but when they do, they generally come from government organizations which use them to demonstrate the country is winning against Daesh.

Oh, and besides all that, the Wikipedia page for Karbala barely mentions the event, and when it does, it never cites a figure greater than 2 million.

I am going to be putting a 'citation needed' tag on every entry for this event. It's possible that the massive figures cited refer to celebrants worldwide, but if that's the case we need to specify. In any case, I think it might be a good idea to delete all entries for this event on this page. theBOBbobato (talk) 17:04, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: After leafing through the histories of edits of this page, I think most of the events cited above about 5 million are bunk. About three years ago there were barely any such events, but now we're overwhelmed by them - and nearly all of them are religious festivals in either India or Iraq, with a handful in other places such as Nigeria, Iran, or the Philippines. All the entries for Western countries are less than 5 million; there are barely any entries for Indian or Iraqi events below 5 million; in fact, the smallest event claimed to take place in Iraq "only" hosted 2.5 million people.
Not to mention that there has been incredible fluctuation in these events over the past few years - huge, record-breaking events keep on appearing and disappearing. Reliably sourced, firmly attested events of such size do not simply disappear like that.theBOBbobato (talk) 17:29, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Citation needed I removed these tags and replaced them with the "unreliable source" tag. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:31, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, there is no way of ascertaining the veracity of these claims (not just for Arba'een, but also for other events such as the Kumbh Mela). The media outlets usually report these numbers based on estimates provided by the organizers, who have a vested interest in inflating them. The news reports from The Telegraph, The Times of India etc. are acceptable as citations, but we should attribute these numbers to the original source. For example, "According to the country's Transport Minister...", "Based on an estimate by the festival organizers..." etc. utcursch | talk 21:16, 22 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we can reorganize the article? I think it might be a good idea to sort the records according to purpose and location, and keep the recurring events such as the Arba'een in their own section. We ought to also to convert it to a table which provides a box which states clearly which sources are providing the figures cited. That should allow readers to get a much clearer picture.theBOBbobato (talk) 16:39, 23 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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