Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Essex shooting rampage

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. --Bongwarrior (talk) 01:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Essex shooting rampage

Essex shooting rampage (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Not especially notable murder case. Article written in a tabloid style with no supporting citations, and is full of speculation and aparrently original research. I removed some of the worst excesses but much more needs to be done to fix this and I don't believe the notability warrants it. Ros0709 (talk) 14:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Delete seems to be much more news than anything else. Shootings aren't inherently notable, and without references it can't be proven to be notable. Nyttend (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - what I would consider a COI, in that the creator is from the area and feels "THIS WAS A VERY LARGE INCIDENT FOR THE PEOPLE OF VERMONT" (actual first line of the article at one point). Pairadox (talk) 14:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. At least until it can be decided whether the article can be rehabilitated. Wikipedia isn't paper. Exploding Boy (talk) 16:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
    • WP:PAPER states "This policy is not a free pass for inclusion: Articles still must abide by the appropriate content policies, in particular those covered in the five pillars." Ros0709 (talk) 16:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - Full disclosure; I am also from the area, and have an indirect connection (the woman killed at the school was my nephew's teacher the previous year).
    As horrible as this incident was, it was not in the long term more notable than any of the other multiple murders that happen across the country each year. As the events unfurled, there was community concern because one of the three shooting locations was the local elementary school, however the event began and ended at private residences, and was quickly understood to be a domestic dispute gone horribly wrong. It was also traumatic because in one day the town had more murders than in a normal decade. Having said that, it is still no more notable than such an incident in any other usually peaceful small community across the nation.
    If the school had been in session, or if school itself was a target (rather than the ex-girlfriend who happened to teach there), or if a Police Officer had been wounded or killed, I would argue that it was notable, but as is it is not more notable than other such incidents (which unfortunately still happen every year someplace) which Wikipedia does not normally cover. —MJBurrage(T•C) 16:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - We don't need to be remembering the people who do these things. The quicker they're forgotten, the less likely they are to inspire others to do the same. - Denimadept (talk) 19:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment - Not exactly the kind of reasoning that will make much of a difference here. Pretty crappy article, though - WP:NOT#NEWS sounds good enough for me. Delete. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep if promptly sourced. School shootings are essentially always notable--this is a little different than most of them, but there will be sufficient sources. It was incredible careless not to have put them in originally. Of the above delete arguments, one is that the act was reprehensible, one was that based on local knowledge it was not exceptional, one that the quality was very low, one that the author had COI in coming from the general area, & not news, used for something which is more than temporary new, extending over several years at least--the trial has not yet taken placed two year afterwards, and the nom admitting its notable but saying it isnt worth improving the quality. None of them valid arguments, most of them not even based on any possible WP policy. DGG (talk) 03:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
    • As nominator I most definitely did not admit it was notable. I said that I had not improved the article any more than I had because it lacked notability and doing so was not worthwhile. Ros0709 (talk) 08:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Your justification for keep is that this was a school shooting and school shootings are always notable. But this was not a school shooting per se. It was a domestic incident which happened to involve a teacher so took place partly in a school building - but the school was not in session. Ros0709 (talk) 08:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete I agree, this is a domestic violence incident that happened at the victims' workplace, which happened to be a school. (The most prominent fact is that the school was not in session at the time, so there were only employees in the building at the time). If it had occurred at a flower shop, what would you call it? Mandsford (talk) 15:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - Per WP:NOT#NEWS. BusterD (talk) 19:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.