Talk:Parkland high school shooting

Splitting proposal

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.

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I propose that section the suspect section of Nikolas Cruz be split into a separate page called Nikolas Cruz. The content of the Nikolas Cruz is too large to be on this page. It is large enough to make their own page. Some of his information should however be kept on this page Grahaml35 (talk) 23:49, 8 May 2019 (UTC) Grahaml35 5/8/19

• Oppose. All that needs to be said about Cruz can be contained within this article. WWGB (talk) 00:44, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - The Suspect section is roughly 20% of the article, not too large. Nor is the article too large at only 39 kB readable prose size. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:00, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per above, nothing more needs to be said about him, it's fine within the article itself. QueerFilmNerd^talk 21:43, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Don't give that him his own article. He's a murderer that does not deserve anymore attention at all costs. Also haven no idea why my vote was "rejected" earlier, was it because I said some "bad" words? Well my bad but I want him to hang.Dr. Pizza (talk) 08:22, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Dr. Pizza, you've been here long enough to know what the rules of engagement are. Kindly keep your personal opinions to yourself. Drmies (talk) 04:20, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• Split, Confining our coverage of Cruz to this article would only make sense if we somehow knew that every single possible reader would only be interested in him in the context of the Stoneman Douglas shooting. However, some of our readers may be students doing essays on the pros and cons of gun control, or reasonable equivalent, who are looking specifically for our coverage of the backgrounds of mass killers - and aren't interested in the actual murders. Those reader should be able to skip from Jack the Ripper, to Nikolas Cruz to Charles Manson, in their search for what they have in common - skipping the details of their actual murders. Geo Swan (talk) 11:35, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose There is already a great amount of detail about Cruz and his life in the article, mass shooters don't need their own articles unless they commit the most deadliest attacks in U.S. History, Omar Mateen and Stephen Paddock for example YatesTucker00090 (talk) 23:03, 5 June 2019 (UTC)YatesTucker00090
• Split. The perpetrator's background elicited legal changes affecting similar persons. It needs to be analyzed in a separate article. Zezen (talk) 08:37, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
• Split. The person is still alive and represents an unfathomable paradox. It is inevitable that his psychological state will be subject to numerous investigations. The unanswerable question of "why did he do this" will linger for the duration of his lifetime. This person represents a cogent area for scholarship as well as ordinary commentary apart from the horrendous event that defines him. The person as an entity is well-enough defined to warrant his own article. Bus stop (talk) 12:47, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - The subject is covered more than sufficiently in this article. Moreover, near nothing appears to have changed in the coverage of the suspect in the past year, barring some copy-edits, rewording and the dispute over whether to keep his date of birth in. At <40kb of written prose, we are not at the stage where splitting is necessary. Mr rnddude (talk) 15:04, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - it's not necessary at this point. The article isn't too long and I don't think Cruz is independently notable of this shooting. AdA&D 18:34, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose there's no point in making a seperate article for the shooter as majority of the article is about the shooting a portion is about Cruz. Not the entire thing Lylahearts (talk) 08:26, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Cruz's section is too short at the time. I would support splitting when more information about him emerges. --Pjoona11 (talk) 13:13, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
• YatesTucker00090, Mr rnddude, Anne drew Andrew and Drew, Lylahearts, Pjoona11, I suggest that our discussions should be actual discussions, where we read the opinions of people who disagree with us, do our best to understand any valid points they made, and do our best to offer rebutals of those points.

  I pointed out some of our readers may ONLY be interested in Cruz, and not interested in the killing, at all, because they are doing a survey of mass killers, like Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, Charles Manson, and aren't interested in the details of their killings, either.

  Coverage in a standalone article is neither a reward, or a punishment. We should not allow our personal admiration of people we like to influence us to create articles about them, if they don't genuinely measure up to GNG. And, we should not prevent notable individuals from having standalone articles out of moral repugnance. GNG and our other special purpose notability guidelines should rule.

  Mr rnddude, Anne drew Andrew and Drew, Lylahearts, Pjoona11, all voiced some variation of "the article doesn't contain enough information about Cruz to justify a split". Sorry, but I suggest this opinion shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how notability is determined. We don't delete a weak article on a genuinely notable topic, we fix those articles. So, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to look solely at this article to determine whether Cruz meets our inclusion criteria. Rather, policy compliant contributors form an independent conclusion as to whether a topic measures does or does not measure up to our inclusion criteria.

  Look at this google news search for "Nikolas Cruz" personality".

  Look at this google scholar search for "Nikolas Cruz" personality".

  The news articles and scholarly articles hit by these searches aren't mainly about the killing, they cover Cruz in detail. Some of them mention the killings only in passing. Geo Swan (talk) 02:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Consider Animal Abuse and Human Abuse: Partners in Crime... It is mainly about the history of early abuse of animals by mass killers. Parkland is mentioned only in passing.

    If someone were to add this reference to this article, they would be doing so aware that it would likely be removed, as off-topic, because it was really about Cruz, not the shooting. So, the argument that there is not enough coverage of Cruz, in the article, is a very weak argument. Since much of the material they claim is absent would be off-topic, and would be removed, from this article, because it was off-topic. Geo Swan (talk) 02:16, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

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.

Include Cruz's birthdate?

Re: [1][2]

Repeating my editsum: "Removing Cruz's birthdate. This is not a biography of Cruz, and he is unlikely to be confused with a different Nikolas Cruz who was 19 on February 14, 2018."

Responding to WWGB's editsum:

• as it does for other Shooter descriptions - That's some other shooter descriptions. Regardless, pointing to precedent is never a particularly strong argument, as what's common is not necessarily what's best and the encyclopedia must be allowed to evolve and improve. I would defer to an explicit community consensus or long-standing, unambiguous guideline on this, but I'm fairly certain none exists.
• it is well-referenced to multiple reliable sources - Another weak argument, per WP:ONUS.
• it adds context to subsequent life events, such as the prison guard bashing - I can only assume that refers to Cruz's attack on the jail officer on November 13. How does it add context to know that his birthday was on September 24? In any case, if there is any content where his birthday is relevant, it should be pointed out there, rather than assuming readers will remember the birthdate and figure out that relevance on their own. That can be done without giving a precise birthdate, e.g. "within days of Cruz's birthday". ―Mandruss ☎ 20:10, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Mandruss—why should we omit the date of birth of the person suspected of being the shooter? You've said "This is not a biography of Cruz, and he is unlikely to be confused with a different Nikolas Cruz". A reader may want to know the date of birth. Do you have any other reasons for wanting to remove the date of birth of the person suspected of being the shooter? Bus stop (talk) 01:39, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

So, readers are "allowed" to know the birth date of school shooters like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Jaylen Fryberg, Adam Lanza, Brenda Spencer, Seung-Hui Cho, John Samir Zawahri, Mainak Sarkar, Amy Bishop Anderson, Charles Whitman, Thomas Watt Hamilton etc, but Mandruss thinks we do not want/need to know the same information about Cruz. Like all very experienced editors, I know about WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but precedent, convention and expectation also have a role in Wikipedia. If Mandruss was serious about birth dates not being reported then one might expect a similar intervention elsewhere, rather than picking on one article.

WP:WEIGHT requires that "each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources". Well, Cruz's birth date has been reported in multiple reliable sources, so it satisfies that criterion.

Finally, I am stunned that one long-standing and established fact from one article is being cherry-picked for deletion. It seems so random and inconsistent. WWGB (talk) 04:21, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

• Mandruss, aren't you second-guessing our readers? Just because you can't imagine why readers might be interested in his birthdate doesn't mean readers won't find very interesting reasons to want to know his birthdate.

Don't sports statisticians, and actuaries, correlate things like, which birth months produce the best pitchers, which birth months are most likely to commit suicide?

Our readers may include people who want to refute or confirm whether birth month plays a role in whether a kid grows up to be a killer. Why should your, well... frankly... your failure of imagination, preclude those readers looking up his birthday here?

Our readers may include those who believe in astrology. Yeah, I don't believe in astrology, either. Nevertheless, should our personal disbelief preclude those readers looking up his birthday here? Geo Swan (talk) 11:57, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Check the time stamps, I long ago conceded this case for lack of support. But it hasn't altered my strong view that filtering information is an important part of Wikipedia editing, and that we need to make cases for including content, not for omitting it. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:21, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

You are suggesting that we filter information. How would we know what is needed by readers? We are not tasked with anticipating the needs of readers. We are tasked with reflecting sources and including information that falls squarely within an article's scope. Bus stop (talk) 13:21, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Is it OK to publicly identify the two teenagers who committed suicide a year after the shooting?

The article mentions two Stoneman Douglas teenagers who committed suicide a year after the shooting, but the persons are not publicly identified in the article. I'm not sure if it's OK to mention the names of the boy and the girl in the article. The names of all the victims are mentioned. Should the two suicide victims be publicly identified in the article?Anthony22 (talk) 13:34, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

No, the article does not benefit from inclusion of their names. WWGB (talk) 13:41, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

"Alleged killer" and "accused killer" are the wrong adjectives to use in the article

There is no question that Nikolas Cruz is the person who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others on February 14, 2018. It is also true that he has not yet been convicted of the heinous crime. In my humble opinion, however, it is silly and even ridiculous to refer to him as the "alleged" or "accused" gunman simply because he has not yet been convicted of murder. Those adjectives were appropriate for O.J. Simpon but not Cruze.

Many suspects were referred to as "killers" and not "alleged killers" before their respective convictions. The day after Jack Ruby killed JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, the New York Times ran a headline," President's assassin is Shot to Death in Jail Corridor by a Dallas Citizen." The Times did not use the terminology "accused assassin" or "alleged assassin." Don't tell me that those words are appropriate only when the criminal is dead or convicted. I recently replaced the words "alleged" and "accused gunman" with "perpetrator" and "gunman" in this article, but the edits were reverted. The reverted edits should also be reverted.

Cruz's trial is scheduled to begin early next year. The prosecution refused to take the death penalty off the table, and it looks to me like Cruz's lawyers have no alternative but to mount an insanity defense in the hope of sending Cruz to the state mental hospital instead of death row.Anthony22 (talk) 00:17, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

WP:BLPCRIME requires a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Hence, Cruz is just "the accused/the alleged" for now. A comparison of media standards in 1963 with the present day is spurious. WWGB (talk) 01:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

This is largely irrelevant because WP:BLPCRIME applies. There have been similar arguments, eg at Christchurch mosque shootings, but if no trial has taken place, Wikipedia is not the judge and jury in the matter.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I totally agree that Wikipedia is not a judge and jury in highly publicized criminal cases. A suspect is presumed innocent until he/she pleads guilty or is convicted at trial. You have to recognize, however, that a criminal's guilt or innocence is unrelated to that person's status as living or deceased. Many heinous criminals never lived to stand trial. If you insist that Nikolas Cruz (living) is innocent until he is convicted, you must also recognize that dead people are also presumed innocent because they have not been convicted. Because of this policy, it is imperative that you edit articles relating to Omar Mateen, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Stephen Paddock, Adam Lanza, Seung-Hui Cho, and Mohamed Atta. Eliminate the words "perpetrator" and "gunman", and replace those words with "alleged" and "accused gunman." Those people were never convicted of their "alleged" crimes. It is imperative that dead people be given the same respect, due process, and benefit of the doubt as people who are still alive after the crimes have been committed. Wikipedia does not convict living people, but this encyclopedia has convicted a hell of a lot of dead people. I guess that it's OK to convict dead people but not living people. There seems to be a double standard of dead vs. living people. Double standards are WRONG.Anthony22 (talk) 11:44, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

It's beyond the scope of this talk page and should be raised at WP:VPP.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 12:21, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Remove information that promotes violence

Is it necessary to include information about “deadliest shooting”? First off how do you measure deadliest? Secondly, with this information included, it only promotes violence because you make it seem like these shootings and acts of violence are a game. When you include this redundant information, you are only inspiring or giving other shooters the idea of how many people to try and hurt to beat the “record” whatever that even means Cleaner THE (talk) 01:13, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

This information is useful (and necessary) to provide context for the article. I can't imagine how this "promotes violence", and your argument is entirely unconvincing.--Jorm (talk) 01:19, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I don’t see how it’s necessary to include that at all. It doesn’t provide context when there is other facts in the article that give context Cleaner THE (talk) 01:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

While I'm not a great fan of lists or score sheets, it is worth noting that this incident led to more deaths than Columbine in 1999. It set off a fresh debate about gun ownership and background checks in the US, so it is notable.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:30, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Cleaner THE, in my view yours is essentially WP:RGW reasoning, in the same social-activism category as the various "don't glorify the shooter" arguments. I oppose indiscriminate inclusion of these rankings, but I agree with Ianmacm that they are sometimes justified and encyclopedic. We should take greater care to avoid rankings that require ongoing updates as new events occur, perhaps always starting with "At the time of the event...". ―Mandruss ☎ 07:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 September 2019

Scot Peterson was not wearing a bullet proof vest. This is referenced in the IA report. The current reference is only speculation. Kcamiliere (talk) 04:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC) https://app.box.com/s/4nikg3wc531ga8rr8wvnnf58eu3zobhm/file/481596436209 source Page 59 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kcamiliere (talk • contribs) 05:17, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

It comes from the CNN cite here. This is an eyewitness report and there are numerous sources saying this. Things can change, so if you want to change the text here, please provide a link to a reliable source.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:06, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@Ianmacm: Sorry, I crossed paths with you and removed that per WP:V. We need sourcing to include that, not omit it. A quote from a student is not adequate sourcing. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:09, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Peterson was criticized for his lack of action, but the specific claim that he was wearing a bulletproof vest is sourced to an eyewitness report and needs stronger sourcing.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:12, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

This is the internal affairs report. The specific reference is on page 59 (talk)