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Alright folks, let's discuss.
I'm going to say right now...in my opinion putting this article, in its lead section, on the same footing as the mostly recent spate of mass shootings like Columbine or Sandy Hook, in with lone gunmen acting on personal grievances instead of putting it in with massacres or slaughters of civilians perpetrated by agents of the US Government? - goes against the very title of the article. And, as a personal aside...just because content is long-standing doesn't make it categorically correct.
And, information in a lead section isn't supposed to necessarily be cited, because per WP:LEAD it exists elsewhere in the article as a major point. That is referenced.
So. Let's discuss and come to an editorial consensus instead of editing & reverting & editing etc. - Shearonink (talk) 20:38, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What matters is what reliable sources say. There are currently at minimum five sources already cited that use this exact language. It is not for us to express an opinion as editors on Wikipedia that differs with the clear consensus of the reliable sources.
I would also add that an event can be two things at once and that these terms are not mutually exclusive. The article title is correct as it is indeed a massacre, but it also is the largest mass shooting committed on American soil. Both of these things can be and are correct at the same time (according to reliable sources). Iljhgtn (talk) 21:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, first off I'm not righting any great wrongs here. This section is what we are supposed to do...discuss editorial issues on the article talk page. I said what my opinion was. So? I keep on eye on this article because it does get attention sometimes from vandals or whatnot but I haven't really edited it that much. Righters of Great Wrongs usually are IN YOUR FACE ALL THE TIME when things don't go their way. I just want to discuss the changes to the lead and get off this present cycle of edit! revert! edit! revert!
A couple of things...the lead section of an article is supposed to summarize important facts that appears in the main text. The concept that a massacre perpetrated by an official part of the US government can also be called a mass shooting appears nowhere else in the article. *If* the editorial consensus is that this information is verifiable and reliable etc then that concept should be discussed in the main part of the article perhaps in the Remembrance section or in the Other subsection of Popular culture. If historians and scholarship and reliable sources since the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016 and the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 (which I suppose why the cited sources date from those years) regard this awful event as a mass shooting and ties it in with the American gun culture etc., etc. then maybe how people's attitude towards the Massacre have changed and also how they refer to it has changed then that changing attitude could be mentioned in the main part of the article. But right now it is not. So mentioning this terminology in the first sentence at all is incorrect.
5 sources are cited above and in the article as references for saying that the Massacre was a mass shooting. The Guardian source is a single letter to the editor from an individual. The LA Times states that people's definitions of what massacres are and what mass shootings are can differ, it is not cut and dried or laid out as an absolute. To my mind calling the Massacre a mass shooting diminishes it since it was committed by agents of a governmental entity, the US Army and therefore the Federal Government but I can see that other people's regards in this matter differ. It is sad isn't it that we keep tallies of "worst" events?...
The first sentence would possibly seem to more accurately reflect current attitudes & reliable sources if it states something along the lines of: The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was the killing [I think murder would probably be more accurate] of two hundred fifty to three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army and is regarded by many as the deadliest mass shooting in American history. But then a section on scholarship/historians/interviews about the massacre/deadliest mass shooting concepts etc. would also have to be in place in the article. Shearonink (talk) 06:32, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Wounded Knee massacre doesn't fit the definition for a mass shooting as it is defined on Wikipedia (mass shooting, mass shootings in the United States) or the common use of the phrase, even if it was literally a mass shooting. They are clearly different phenomena. The mass shooting article states that warfare is generally excluded and this event and events similar are not mentioned. Including this event would broaden the definition (to the point of being not useful) and the articles would need to be massively rewritten.
As for the articles, those hardly count as a "clear consensus". It's five news articles (or four articles and a letter from a reader) reporting that some people are complaining that Wounded Knee is not considered the worst mass shooting by the public and media, which obviously implies it is not a consensus. The opposite actually, those placing it in the same category as Las Vegas or Orlando are in the minority (unless we're going with the premise that those calling those shootings and the deadliest are simply unaware of Wounded Knee or deliberately acting in bad faith, which would be absurd). Clintville (talk) 23:28, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"as it is defined on Wikipedia"? Really? Both of the Wikipedia articles you provided state the following, "Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition" (from Mass shootings in the United States) and then "There is no widely accepted definition" (from Mass shooting). In both instances there is no "defined on Wikipedia" definition from which to operate on as "clearly different phenomena". I think Shearonink (talk·contribs) provided the most useful comment in that there need be more commentary on this in the body of the article, and even provided suggested sections within which to write these. I will begin making some of those suggested updates now and we can add more in the body together, but it is not up to us to decide what term is best when reliable sources (as already cited) clearly use the "mass shooting" term specifically to refer to the Wounded Knee Massacre. Also, as I mentioned already, the terms are not seen by reliable sources as mutually exclusive. A tragedy such as this can clearly be both a massacre as well as a mass shooting.
Lastly, on a note of my opinion alone, though this is not backed up by policy the way the rest of my above comment is, I do not believe that the words "mass shooting" do anything at all to take away from the significance and horrid nature of this shooting. If anything, to me, it serves only to demonstrate that this shooting is the worst (if ranking is indeed done by reliable sources as it morbidly appears to be) among a long history of shootings in the American experience. Iljhgtn (talk) 21:46, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since I was notified to weigh-in, I'll point out that the use of the term "massacre" was an intentional revision by Lakota in the early twentieth century to rebut the Army's dishonest classification that it was a "battle." While the label of massacre is generally accepted by scholars, it has no agreed legal meaning--there is no crime in any jurisdiction or any enforceable LOAC treaty that uses that term, although I'm aware that some genocide scholars are advocating to make it one (but would have to substantially narrow the definition in order to do so, and tie it to genocide).
In re: worst/deadliest mass shooting, if you search Twitter/X, you will note that Wounded Knee has been widely appropriated by 2nd amendment activists arguing that it is a textbook example of what happens when the government takes away your guns. Of course, the claim is complicated by the fact that most Natives were not citizens at that time, including those at WK, which obviously changes the constitutional argument. Natives were expressly written out of the 14th amendment and generally did not receive citizenship until after WWI. So I don't think it's a scholarly claim at all, but some in the media apparently have picked it up without critical analysis. While WK is certainly discernible in the non-declared war sense, as well as the fact that the campaign was initiated based on bad information, if it's a "mass shooting," then how is it discernible from, say, any use of military force on American soil? That definition would potentially make Civil War battles "mass shootings," even though there are clear differences between the Civil War and what happened at WK. I ran a search of "deadliest mass shooting" and "Wounded Knee" in Google Books. It returns some scholarly books making an entirely different argument, namely that the modern, narrowly-defined focus on mass shootings (mass shootings by a lone shooter or small number of shooters in a public or semipublic place) unfairly ignores the historical mass killings of minorities, such as at WK, Tulsa, etc. I have no problem with that claim, but no scholars seem to be arguing that WK is a mass shooting in the same way as Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, etc. So I think that's a claim that lacks any support outside of popular media. But again, the debate is over a term with no universally agreed definition. Call it a mass shooting or not, but it objectively should not be described as the "worst" or "most deadly," since the lack of a clear definition prevents a definitive comparison with other shootings. Foxtrot5151 (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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