Category talk:University and college shootings

This category was nominated for deletion on 4 February 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Education

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Schools

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Higher education

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Death

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Firearms

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Renaming

This category needs to be renamed to "College and university shootings" (or "University and college shootings" if you prefer). I don't think the intention was to exclude colleges from this list so the name needs to reflect that intent. Or are we actually going to create a "College shooting" category? And perhaps a "Junior college shooting" category, too? --ElKevbo 20:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you are serious about this, this is my proposal for reorganization of the categories:

Main category: Shootings at educational institutions
Lower-level categories:

Shootings at primary and secondary schools
Shootings at universities and colleges

Badagnani 20:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. I'd recommend "Shootings at colleges and universities" unless there are strong reasons for "universities and colleges." I don't know why but in higher ed literature the phrase is usually "colleges and universities;" could be as simple as alphabetical order. --ElKevbo 20:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that "colleges and universities has a more familiar ring to it, but if you look at Category:Universities and colleges, there's already a convention of "universities and colleges." In lieu of an irresistable reason for changing it, I'd suggest sticking with the status quo ("universities and colleges"). bobanny 03:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense. It's too bad that precedent was set but it's not worth trying to change it. --ElKevbo 03:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that "colleges and universities" is preferable but the category die-hards (i.e. those who frequent the pages where categories are voted up or down) were vehement in preferring "universities and colleges." Why they did so is beyond me, but Wikipedia Is Not Paper, and thus any change is always possible, if not easy. Badagnani 03:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there's already a parent category called Category: School massacres. Seems there should be a broader discussion on the parent. The main article for that category (school massacre) redirects to School shooting. Also, the highest death toll in a US school killing was committed with dynamite and wasn't a shooting, and an attempted massacre last year in Montreal only succeeded in one death. Category:School killings might be the most effective at capturing these variations. bobanny 06:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another problem with the "School massacres" cat is that I don't agree that a college or university is a "school." It's an institution of higher learning but not a "school." Badagnani 08:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How so? Dictionary definition-wise, colleges and universities are schools. bobanny 14:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In British English, though there are schools of divinity and such, "school" refers to secondary schools and below. "I'm going to school in the fall" would never mean college or university. I wonder if other varieties of English do the same thing (Indian, NZ, OZ, etc). I agree that it would be better to avoid "school shootings" for that reason. Slp1 15:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't feel strongly about the use of "school." I agree that it could be used and it would be "correct" to do so. But if there are legitimate regional and cultural differences that would preclude that then let's avoid it. --ElKevbo 16:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NZ follows British convention; a university is not considered or called a "school," unlike North American convention. Badagnani 19:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, now I know. But I still think this should end with a CFD proposal for renaming Category:School massacres. Creating a new category would be too redundant, IMO. There's also a "by country" breakdown of subcats that can account for any regional differences. bobanny 21:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've proposed renaming Category:School massacres to Category:Massacres at educational institutions to address this. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_April_28#Category:School_massacres Superm401 - Talk 01:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]