Talk:Atrocity

2002-2005

Editors note: I would like people to add to this as much as possible and do so from the humanist perspective, rather than a nationalist one. Simply speaking, an American may object to the inclusion of the My Lai massacre as an atrocity, but it is certainly one from the point of view of most human beings, not that I speak for them all, but lets not play ignorant. -Sv 00:25, 15 October 2002

Amerocentrism has no defenders on Wikipedia. I question somewhat the usefulness of this article, though. --Robert Merkel (06:45, 15 October 2002, 203.45.8.43)

Speaking of Amerocentrism, isn't it odd to assume 'Civil War' automatically means 'American Civil War'? Practically every country in the world has had one 128.232.242.21 01:27, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The notion that modern man killed off other species of man is not only "pre-historical" but totally without supporting evidence. It is like saying that the puma killed off the sabre-tooth tiger or the coyote killed off the dire wolf. Fredbauder 13:23 Oct 15, 2002 (UTC)

- ...I knew id get some response from that modern man vs neanderthalensis bit :>). But I did it also to illustrate a point, which is that documentation gets more and more unreliable as we go back. But the fact that nobody cares about atrocities that may or may not have happened long ago does lead to a biasing of quasi-varifiable documentation such as ould be found in our oldest, religious based text. So I did it for my own frame of mind, for the article, and the point is to unify all of these varied issues of mass killing, ina centralised article that is intelligently formed by a heirarchy. Thus there are two: Articles representing murders of Holcaust proportions, and the decending order. Or 2 Articles that go progressively backward in time and as such frame their relative irrelevance to current events. So much of these issues we deal with frame ethnically specific holocausts, regardless of time, or veracity. A Encyclopdedia should, I believe, remove this ethnic frame of mind, and work with the historical record. The caveat, of course: History has traditionally belonged to the victors. This may no longer be the case because of the modern record, provided all this information is processed. -Stevertigo 17:53, 15 October 2002

P.S. At least I didnt start getting into my theories of how competition between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, formed the psychic-remnant basis for our current notions of ethnic distinction and raciality. %] Stevertigo 18:00, 15 October 2002

---

I like this new article (although I don't "like" the stuff it's talking about). I think we can move to here -- from the genocide article -- as many as half the disputed instances of "genocide" which don't fit the definitions of genocide specified in international treaties.

To everyone who kept saying that "genocide" was the wrong word, I say you were right all along. Now let's do some fixing up. --Ed Poor 18:04, 15 October 2002

---

hmm I had thought the same thing, on a quick read of these other things, and am not aginst moving or copying some material. I think there should be some legitmate overlap, so that the genocide article remains in itself an article and not a stub. though, yes, murderous acts can be qualified as atrocities without being acts of genocide, which i understand to be systematic. --User:Stevertigo 17:09, 16 October 2002

---

"Atrocities are acts of mass [murder], often, but not necessarily to the degree of genocide." -- I don't think this is an accurate description. An atrocity could also be, for example: mass rape, sans murder; detainment of prisoners in intolerable conditions; torture of parents in presence of children; etc etc etc. Unfortunately humans are all too good at coming up with variations on these.

See http://www.bartleby.com/61/67/A0506700.html --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.165.239.87 (talk • contribs) 23:17, 31 October 2002

---

interesting point. maybe this material should be moved to mass killing, as a separate, general article. atrocity, i admit has some color in it, as a word for encyclopaedic use. hmm... this would make atrocity a more generalised word encompassing all issues rel. mass killing, and then down the scale to... where is the line, do you think, whoever ye are? -Sv 08:15, 5 November 2002

Removed:

• ===Mass killing===

  We here use the term mass killing to refer to all of these atrocities in a non-politicized way. Regardless of the political nature of, or the justifications for them, all such acts of killing peoples en masse are mass killing. incidents.

self referential - i originlly added it thinking this would be a catchall, but this was redundant to the article. silly me. ---Sv 23:10, 7 January 2003

US internment

The US internment of Japanese-Americans in World War 2, does not meet the definition of atrocity stated in the first paragrah. Replaced with references to the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden - which actually killed huge numbers of civilians. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.166.63 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 29 May 2006

Holocaust

This article used to say 'thousands of Jews were killed in the holocaust.' I changed this to 'millions'. People in central Europe have been arrested for getting this figure wrong Indigenius 01:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions for deletion and options regarding this "article"

I just noticed this article today and it's been on my mind all day. I almost nominated it for deletion; in fact I had already pasted the template before deciding it better to discuss it here first. IMHO, this article violates all three cardinal WP policies mentioned on Wikipedia:Deletion policy: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:No original research. Not only that, it doesn't lend any encyclopaedic value (or probably better said, the content could be worked a different way to give encyclopaedic value). First of all, to summarize this article, it's basically giving a definition of "atrocity" and then goes on to list certain events that fit that definition. It's not an article on the phenomenon of "atrocity" (which might be encyclopaedic if the definition could be nailed down) but merely a select list of events that fit the very broad, imprecise definition given within the article itself; this, in itself, is a logical fallacy.

Now, to get to the real problems. The definitions of "atrocity" given are so loose and vague and not based on anything academic (legal, philisophical or otherwise). This is Original Research. Consequently, almost anything could be viewed as an "atrocity"; this opens up POV issues. Atrocity is a very subjective (and loaded) word. What may be considered an atrocity by some, may be considered a great military victory by others. Therefore many things viewed as an "atrocity" may not be verifiable as such, especially considering the definition itself can't even be verified.

Suggested solutions:

• leave the definition to Wiktionary
• everything mentioned here as an "atrocity" already has its own page (Holocaust, The Rape of Nanking, Bombing of Dresden in World War II, etc) where it is described and discussed. Any new material can (and should) be added or merged there. This page adds nothing new and should be deleted, IMHO.
• if it is deemed necessary or valuable to have a "list of events considered 'atrocities' by various groups", there are two options:
  1. make a page called something like List of events considered atrocities or,
  2. create [[Category:Atrocities]] and label all relevent pages (start with the pages that link to this article before it is deleted).

This seems more encyclopaedic and less open to Original Research and POV. Any comments?--WilliamThweatt 02:55, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

There's already a list of 'pepsi types', I don't think wikipedia needs any more lists. Try categories Indigenius 17:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Dresden

Why is Dresden listed as an American Atrocity? The UK was the main proponent in fire bombing the city... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.215.49.6 (talk • contribs) 11:13, 13 September 2006

I Agree: Article should be deleted or a complete reconstruction is necessary

The article is completely disorganized. It fails to provide any history or background to the act of committing atrocities. The only case study it provides is a meager overview of World War Two. As the other person has pointed out, many of the war crimes described on this page are already described in other places. The article is biased in and of itself by not including war crimes outside of World War Two, sending a confused and misleading message that atrocities only occured during WW2. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.38.182.118 (talk • contribs) 04:11, 14 September 2006

Furthermore . . .

Clicking the link to the German version of this article leads to an article titled 'Massaker', which does mean 'massacre', and clicking back to English links to 'Massacre' in English Wikipedia. Resolving this is normally easy, considering the existing issues with this article it should be left to discussion as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.135.48.107 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 8 November 2007

August 2007

Someone said the world is in a mess today, meaning it's never been as bad as this. I agree the environment is in trouble, but mankind has not changed, ever. That's why the environment is in trouble. There's always the same percentage of bad and good, and it's a moving target. People that were bad once, improve and are good. People die and new ones are born. Today we hear there are more atocities than ever before. I think there were always the same percentages of every and all kinds of human evils, as far back as we can go. I can give examples, but everyone knows what I mean if they think about history. So today, we have more people than ever before. We have world wide media coverage and the problems are overwhelming. But basically, people haven't changed. We experience, we suffer, we learn and mature. We can be very good and very bad. We somehow reach a place where we decide to choose good. Yet if someone tried to hurt our loved ones, we would do whatever it took to prevent them, including murder. We want something better for our children, however, they will make their own mistakes. It's a neverending cycle. There is not a country on earth, that does not have a good and bad history. Individually, we've all made mistakes. It happens at home, between neighbours, friends, religion, fat versus skinny, educated, versus uneducated, the haves, and the have nots. This isn't new. Bullies, and beggers since time began. We can play any role. Human nature is what it is. Comments?(74.110.132.156 07:33, 13 August 2007 (UTC))

Following on from discussion at Talk:British Empire...

This article was flouting WP's rules, as noted above. I have

• removed the capital punishment section. This is an article about atrocity, not capital punishment.
• moved the list of atrocities to List of atrocities, please see Talk:List of atrocities for my comments on that.

The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick ^t 13:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

wiktionary:atrocity

When this article was created back in 2002 there was no wiktionary. Now that there is a wiktionary this article is redundant as the dictionary entry wiktionary:atrocity fulfils the same requirement. So I have been bold and I have turned this page into a disambiguation page. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 16:55, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Good stuff. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick ^t 17:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Atrocity/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This article is extremely biased and should be deleted. Deedle2038 17:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 17:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 19:46, 1 May 2016 (UTC)