Brigadier General James Monroe Williams

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

An anonymous user, or possibly a small group of anonymous users, has repeatedly deleted the paragraph discussing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that occurred near Littleton from this page's History section. Going by their edit summaries, it appears they feel that referencing the incident somehow promotes it.

I disagree, and I think the paragraph on the shootings should remain. Although the incident technically occurred in neighboring Columbine, Colorado (which has a Littleton ZIP code), it did draw national attention to Littleton and is thus relevant to the Littleton page's History section. To be fair, the paragraph in question has no citation.

I didn't author the reference to the shootings, but I am concerned that allowing its deletion on the grounds that it irritates another editor would set a bad precedent.

So, in the interest of defusing an edit war, I'm requesting comment from the editor community: should the paragraph referencing the Columbine shootings remain in the Littleton article or not? FUBAR007 (talk) 19:40, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I'll !vote here later, but I would like to see others' opinions about why this content should be here rather than in Columbine, Colorado. For our purposes, I'm not convinced that the "national attention" the proposer refers to is more important than where the shooting actually occurred. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I agree with the deletion. Being subjectively "near" something notable neither makes the subject notable for that other thing, nor logically connects it to that other thing. E.g., if I live next door to a movie star that is meaningless to Wikipedia and its audience, even if I were notable enough for an article myself. There was no "national attention" on Littleton, but on Columbine. That said, mentioning the Columbine massacre here doesn't "promote" that event; that claim doesn't logically make sense. The shooting simply isn't relevant to this article, any more than what Canada's national holidays are is relevant to an article on the US, Russia, or Greenland.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:47, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment, presently the contentabout the Columbine High School shooting doesn't have any inline citations to verify it. Therefore it is subject to WP:BURDEN. That being said, here are some references saying that Columbine High School is in Littleton: History Channel, CNN, Encyclopedia Britannica, CNN Library, & New York Times. More over these: Eric W. Hickey (22 July 2003). Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime. SAGE Publications. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-7619-2437-1. & Seymour Bernard Sarason (1 January 2001). American Psychology & Schools: A Critique. Teachers College Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-8077-4087-3.. That being said there are is this counter making the assertion that the high school is not in Littleton: Ralph W. Larkin (1 January 2007). Comprehending Columbine. Temple University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-59213-492-2.. So weight of reliable sources say that a mention should be included. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 04:11, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Have to disagree. The school is either in Littleton or not in Littleton, it's not a matter of opinion or a gray area. We have no obligation to go with the RS majority if we know it to be incorrect. Google Maps shows the school one mile west of the Littleton city limit, and that's good enough for me until someone comes up with something more authoritative that contradicts it (no media source is more authoritative than Google Maps for something like this). ―Mandruss ☎ 17:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. As an encyclopedia, not a pop-culture rag, WP has a duty to present actual facts, not proven false statements that simply happen to be common misbeliefs. By way of compromise, some mention could be made of the fact that the Columbine shootings have sometimes been associated with Littleton, but actually took place in the nearby Columbine township, and that should be enough.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: I concur with your compromise, no more than one sentence, and that doesn't seem inconsistent with RightCowLeftCoast's "a mention should be included". ―Mandruss ☎ 17:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There was some wording in this article at one point to that effect; Columbine isn't even a "township" though, it's truly a "Census designated place" - an unincorporated area (common form of urban sprawl out here in the west. So, if phrasing is accurate, the concept noted above is on the right track. Montanabw^(talk) 02:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep it in and Comment: The geography of the greater Denver metropolitan area needs to be considered - [[Columbine, Colorado

| Columbine]] is an unincorporated census-designate place, Littleton is a "real" town; both are part of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. google maps gives the street address for the high school as being in Littleton, even though technically it's outside the city limits; this is real common in the west. For example, I live in the country but my address is the nearby city, only the zip code reveals that I'm probably in the county; there is an elementary school about three miles from my house, also outside the city limits, also addresses as "in" my town. The paragraph in the article as it exists as of the time I'm writing this looks like it explains it pretty well. Montanabw^(talk) 05:45, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep — As a Brit, I didn't even know the Columbine shootings were in Colorado, to be honest; if I were reading about Littleton I'd expect to see this information. Per Montanabw's comment, I'd suggest it should be mentioned here and in the article about Denver. The way the paragraph is worded at the moment explains the detail pretty well. I can understand concerns about undue weighting, but the best solution to that, to my mind, would be to expand the section about Littleton's history, rather than to remove content that is both relevant and well-written. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 07:23, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Postal addresses should not be given much weight when considering if a particular location is in or out of a municipality. For rural or semi-rural areas, the postal address is often just the building where the mail trucks deliver the mail to be sorted for rural delivery or general pickup. The postal routes are set up for the efficiency of the postal service, and have nothing to do with municipal boundaries.—Anne Delong (talk) 02:31, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep — Much weight? Either a location is within a municipality, or it is not. Period, end of story — regardless of what the postal address is. However, in the United States, mailing addresses establish de facto locations. When the name of a municipality appears in a mailing address, it is typically assumed that the location is within the municipality — when this is often not true. In this case, the news media took the school’s mailing address at face value (6201 S. Pierce St., Littleton, CO 80123) and reported that the incident happened “in Littleton”, when the only fail-safe conclusion one can make about the school’s location from its mailing address is that it is “in a ZIP code to which the U.S. Postal Service has assigned the place name ‘Littleton’”. All that being said, it is FACT that the school’s location was reported as being in Littleton, and that the city became widely associated with the incident. Right or wrong, this is what happened. To exclude from the article about the city any mention of an incident that focused worldwide attention upon it and made “Littleton” a household name would be whitewash. Watkinsian (talk) 05:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• I would think that a brief mention or entry in "see also" is sufficient. It didn't happen here. We don't discuss the events of 9/11 in Long Island do we? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:25, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• No, we do not. And why not? Because the media unequivocally and correctly reported that the Twin Towers fell in Lower Manhattan. Name a SINGLE reference when ANY media outlet at ANY time in ANY context characterized the events of 9/11 happening on Long Island. <silence> The difference here is that the world media did indeed widely report that the massacre happened in Littleton. For instance, Der Spiegel, Germany’s news magazine of record, maintains an archive of articles about the incident entitled – wait for it – “Amoklauf von Littleton” (translation: Massacre of Littleton). That a highly-respected foreign news source still refers to the location as “Littleton” these many years after the event demonstrates that the initial reporting and the convention of reporting locations based on postal designations is highly ingrained and quite intractable. Do a Google search with the words “Littleton” and “massacre” – the top hits include articles from the New York Times and Time magazine, both containing “Littleton” in their titles. Again, it’s FACT that the media reported Littleton as the location of the tragedy, and for better or worse, the city will likely always be associated with it. Any honest review of Littleton’s history must touch on the fact that world attention was focused on it because of what happened at the nearby school, even if the occurrence was outside city limits. Watkinsian (talk) 06:05, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]