Talk:Hungerford massacre

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School shooting

This qualifies as a school shooting. Ryan shot himself whilst in the school, hence making it a school shooting. I don't see what the difficulty would be in seeing the category's way into the article. - 108.71.133.201 (talk) 17:41, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much for bringing it here to discuss. I don't agree at all. Can I respectfully ask if you have read School shooting or looked at the contents of Category:School shootings committed by adults or Category:School shootings I see no similarity. Yes, Ryan did indeed top himself at a school but his attack was an apparently fairly random ramble round Hungerford. It doesn't seem anything like the others, nor like the definitions given in the article. It was not an attack on a school and its people - it was an attack, surely, on a town? Best wishes DBaK (talk) 20:33, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Licence vs. license

Discuss here rather than edit-warring. This is an English article, as such it should adhere to the English (British) standard. Enigma^msg 00:37, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree, and at the moment "licensed" is incorrectly spelt in 2 of its 3 uses in the article - whether we are using British or American English. Although the noun is spelt differently (UK= "a licence", US = "a license") the verb is spelt identically in both varieties of English as "to license". So "Licenced firearms ownership" should be "Licensed firearms ownership" and "he was in licenced possession" should be "he was in licensed possession" to remove the spelling mistakes. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:15, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. The vandal IP who changed it to the wrong spelling is obviously the same IP-hopping sock, evading blocks, as seen at Downloadable content. - David Biddulph (talk) 08:35, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps User:Enigmaman can correct it, as he has set full-protection on the article? --David Biddulph (talk) 08:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

 Done Enigma^msg 22:16, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Chris Bowsher and RDF

Cultural references lack mention of 'Hungerford Poem' and 'Hot on the wire'. Both by Chris Bowsher of RDF who was a witness to the atrocity. 92.40.218.136 (talk) 18:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

 Done. Added reference to both songs with a WP:RS. MIDI (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Abdul Khan

I contest that Eric Vardy's funeral (Aftermath section) was the "beginning" of the series of funerals following the massacre. I recall in the 1990s I read a book (title and author forgotten) by a British publisher about the massacre which stated that the first funeral of a victim to take place was that of Abdul Khan, a Muslim, which I recall was stated to be 24 hours after his death (likely for religious reasons) and that it was attended by 2,000 people, though the book stated no venue. Needs checking up. I am sure there would have also been local news coverage.Cloptonson (talk) 16:19, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I've only found one specific mention of Khan's funeral so far, which is in Josephs (1993) and says "More than 200 people attended the funeral of Mr Abdul Rahman Khan, as Muslim mourners paid their last respects". It also says "The first of the funerals had taken [...] on Wednesday 26 August, exactly one week after the massacre. It was the funeral of Erie [sic] Vardy". Unless we can cite any more about Khan's funeral, despite an Islamic funeral needing to take place as soon as possible after death, WP:VNT must apply. MIDI (talk) 09:56, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

That was probably the book I read, as at the time it was later than 1993 -my memory was obviously playing tricks about the numbers and about the timing. I have just realised also there would need to be time for a legally-required post-mortem. My recall was it was the first funeral mentioned, so I must have assumed by my same memory it was the first funeral to take place.Cloptonson (talk) 16:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:Hungerford massacre/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: PARAKANYAA (talk · contribs) 00:26, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi! I'll review this.

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Generally quite good, but some tweaks/criticisms (I will come back to this and add more later) In lead: "shooting himself" - say either "killing himself" or "shooting and killing himself", the way this is phrased it's ambiguous if he died. second sentence in second paragraph of lead is too long and a bit of a run on sentence, maybe split into two Update: "despite there having been no opportunity to investigate such causes." this is written confusingly. rephrase? "and he was also a member of the Wiltshire Shooting Centre" confusing in relation to previous sentence, was he approved to use the guns there? "until the police informed him of the welfare of his mother" - this might just be me being american but the usage of "welfare" here is odd. is he asking if she's okay? "his gun had either jammed" - weird usage of had here, remove?
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Everything looks good here, except per words to watch I don't think the word "speciously" is needed in the health and motive sectiuon. Seems like editorializing and the rest of the sentence makes it clear the connection is dubious
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	No issues here, pass.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	I'll check the specific citations later, but from a quick overview, it seems to rely a lot on the report. While primary sources are allowed, I think this article would benefit from a wider variety of used sources. While a lot of the specific details would obviously only be in the report, I believe some of these facts could be backed up by other (secondary) sources. The formatting on a lot of the citations is not very informative (for example, using "www.telegraph.co.uk" instead of "The Telegraph", or the unformatted Google News Archive citation (you can get page, heading, issue etc from google news archives usually) but that's just a bit annoying and not a fail criterion for GAs. I am not sure the Trakt.tv source is reliable. UPDATE: Citations 25 and 31 are cited to tabloids of questionable reliability, however they are not marked unreliable and are "less bad" than most tabloids. Replace them if you can I suppose but I won't fail over it. The "Crime Investigation UK" source concerns me, I can't really get a read on its reliability. 19, 21 and 23 are press photos - are those usable as sources? Are there any non-report sources for the content of the report? Any secondary sources reflecting on it? That would be good.
	2c. it contains no original research.	Every spot check I performed from online sources was good and accurate to the text. Can't access the book sources but I will assume good faith. Will do more checks after source problems are addressed
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Only things earwig showed were attributed quotes which don't seem to be unnecessarily long, looks good.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Seems fine
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	No issues here.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	No big issues here.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No edit wars, no large content changes, seems good here.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	All images either have valid fair use rationales or are commons. Pass.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	All are relevant and have relevant captions. The only issue/criticism I have is, should the image of Ryan be moved down to the perpetrator section? I suppose since it's a spree shooting there's not one image but that is usually a bit non standard for these kinds of article. I'm not sure if those Kartographer type maps can be moved into the infobox but if it can maybe it should? Not a big issue though.
	7. Overall assessment.

Thanks, PARAKANYAA. Will be chipping away at your recommendations (particularly the reliance on the report source) when I can! Just wanted to leave a note here to show I wasn't neglecting this! MIDI (talk) 11:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, no rush. I'll get back to the prose and "main aspect" check soon. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Source review:

News sources

• 1, 9, 28, 33, 40, 48, The Guardian - good
• 2, 41, 43, BBC News - good
• 5, 11, 51 The Daily Telegraph - good
• 7, Gazette and Herald - I am unfamiliar with the british local press but this seems like a bog standard local newspaper. probably fine
• 12, The Herald (Glasgow) - good
• 18, BerkshireLive, local paper, seems fine
• 19, UPI - good
• 21, African Concord, seems to be a very very obscure African newspaper. Okay I think
• 26, Daily Mirror. Seems to be no consensus (described as the "least bad" of the british tabloids, not a ringing endorsement). It's not too big of a deal here I think, as it's only citing a family member of his about where his ashes are. Maybe should be replaced if you can find something else saying this.
• 29, Police Professional, seems ok
• 32, Evening Standard, no consensus on reliability, but said to be more reliable than most tabloids and newspapers like that, so replace if you can but if not too big of a deal
• 39, Associated Press - good

Books

• 3, looks good
• 14, looks good
• 15, Cawthorne, seems fine
• 17, looks good
• 25, looks good
• 37, looks good
• 42, looks fine but I remember hearing something weird about this publisher before so I should probably check - checked, looks good
• 45, looks good
• 46, this is an SF publisher? check later - looks good
• 47, looks good
• 49, looks good

Other

• 4, - the official report - good, mostly, reliable but primary, can be used just maybe a bit less as I said before
• 6, is this a documentary or a reenactment/dramatization?
• 8, this one confuses me. is this some guy's random website? does he have relevant credentials? if not i think this has to be replaced. Does he have credentials?
• 10, 12, Crime Library. I've used this site before but I have no idea if this site is considered reliable by Wikipedia, but I've never had any issues with it. I'll check later
• 16, Crime + Investigation UK, unsure, - update: seems okay?
• 20, 22, 24, this is just a press photo
• 17, the act itself, which is fine, good to have secondary source that backs it up though
• 34, Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques, seems good
• 36, looks good
• 38, looks good
• 44, unsure of the reliability of stuff like this but probably good, will check later - seems fine
• 50, this is a zine, unsure of how this works out, will check later - seems fine

I'll finish this later.

Besides the source review one thing I'm curious about with the coverage is the reactions: did the royals really not say anything? I know they did with the Cumbria shootings, but I'd be quite surprised if they didn't say anything about this one, which seemed to have a more dramatic effect on society. Generally I feel the reactions section could probably be expanded. PARAKANYAA (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Right now I think the biggest thing is swapping out ref #8 (Josephs) – the article relies on it for a few statements and I agree its authority is questionable. To answer your question, #6 is a documentary. MIDI (talk) 09:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@MIDI (sorry for the late response) yes that looks good. If #6 is a documentary that's alright then. The report being cited a lot isn't that big of an issue now that I think about it, since it would be the most accurate on what events happened when. I will continue with the prose review and check the sources I wasn't sure about. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:50, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA, @MIDI, what's the status? -- asilvering (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

On this now. MIDI (talk) 09:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

@MIDI I have some minor prose suggestions and questions about the sourcing (see table above) PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@PARAKANYAA: I should have some time today (or more likely tomorrow) to throw at 1a and 2b, which look like the (main) sticking points at the moment. MIDI (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@MIDI It's been a while and my worries over the sourcing remain unaddressed. I think I may have to fail this. Apologies :( PARAKANYAA (talk) 08:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Speculation about intent to contain DNA evidence

I realize that such analysis existed at the time, but how well known was it to the public only a couple of years after its inception? Well known enough that a guy intending to commit rape might have tried to avoid leaving that specific type of evidence? We can only go by what the sources say, but I think it's acceptable to exercise discretion in whether to include such things which are otherwise not crucial to understanding either the subject or its place in the bigger picture of history, sociology, criminology, etc. It is, after all, just speculation. No one was raped and Ryan's motives are unknowable. 100.40.29.68 (talk) 23:16, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Good point. In the two sources we use (the official report and the BBC's "Massacre" publication) say:

• Report: "RYAN took with her from the car a groundsheet which was subsequently found spread out on the grass about 75 yards away. Mrs GODREY was found some 10 yards away from the groundsheet having been shot [...] It is possible that RYAN intended to rape Mrs GODFREY and that he shot her when she tried to run away, but this has to be speculation"
• BBC: "Prof Jackson said it was likely Ryan had intended to [rape Susan Godfrey]. A groundsheet was found nearby, which could have been laid by Ryan in order to contain DNA evidence. 'I think she either refused to [have sex] or resisted,' he said. 'Perhaps he killed her in panic when she attempted to run away.'"

Saying the groundsheet was intended to contain any sort of evidence (DNA or otherwise) is a stretch from these two sources – the report just says it was present, and that Ryan may have intended to sexually assault her, but for us to link the groundsheet to that is too WP:SYNTH. The BBC article doesn't actually cite anyone making the speculation about the groundsheet's purpose – if it wasn't said by one of the experts (Jackson?) then who is saying the "could have been"? It's a bold claim, albeit one stated/repeated by an RS like the BBC, but unless we can say "[such-and-such authority] suggested that the presence of the groundsheet suggested Ryan was intending to commit rape" then we're best off not perpetuating it – and as you say, its inclusion (or exclusion) do not impact understanding of the topic. MIDI (talk) 12:44, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Have trimmed – left the mention of the groundsheet in, but removed the reference to DNA. MIDI (talk) 12:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)