Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of serial killers by number of victims

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - no consensus - SimonP 00:09, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

List of serial killers by number of victims

Articles need to be verifiable, and this chart is inherently unverifiable and impossible to list. Bathory, for instance, has been suggested to have killed anywhere from 0 to 600 people, the 600 figure listed here is pure folklore. Also, a ranking by number of deaths is inherently a ghoulish scorecard mentality that should not be endorsed by this encyclopedia. The existence of this article can only cause problems. DreamGuy 04:47, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

• Delete Agree completely with DreamGuy -CunningLinguist 05:46, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as above. AlexTiefling 09:00, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - Some of the historical cases are questionable - not to mention that at least some may be based of fraudulent accusations or folktale-enhanced body counts - sometimes law enforcement cannot find all the victims or prove all the kills, sometimes the killer may claim more victims that he actually killed and so on. Unverifiable, rumormonger bait - Skysmith 10:11, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but perhaps clarify - the victim count would do better to be split into lower and upper bounds (perhaps 'confirmed' (by agencies) and 'assumed' (i.e. folklore)). The fact that figures are hard to relate to is no worse than on something like List of metropolitan areas by population, where the figures are also very debatable and difficult to compare. The ghoulishness argument is invalid: a global encyclopedia cannot pander to the squeamishness of any individual or group. --Douglas 13:13, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as unverifiable. --Scimitar 15:05, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and tag for verification and cleanup. We should purge the ones we're not sure of, but the # of victims for many killers is verifiable. We should also add in a lead, noting that the list isn't comprehensive due to lack of verifiable totals for some killers. Meelar (talk) 15:07, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

There's no point to tagging it for verification when verification is inherently impossible. That defeats the entire purpose of putting the tag there. DreamGuy 17:45, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Verification is not inherently impossible; for example, John Wayne Gacy mentions exactly 33 victims. What I'm arguing is that this page should include only killers with verifiable victim counts, and include a lead at the top saying that there exist other killers such as X, Y, or Z who may have more. Meelar (talk) 21:46, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Which is what my Keep vote indicates. Keep only those who are verifiable. -- Longhair | Talk 21:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you only keep those that are actually verifiable it'll will be a tiny list missing most of the names most people would expect to see when they went here. I can;t see how that would be useful either. DreamGuy 11:33, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. agree with Meelar and don't forget to include American serial killers. Mgm|^(talk) 15:43, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. AFAIK, and I've done some reading on the subject, "# of victims" is often unverifiable; bodies are never found, mass graves contain an unknown number of victims, killers lie about the number of victims (both reducing and exaggerating the count), law enforcement officials sometimes credit deaths/missing persons to serial killers simply to "close" the case (and are sometimes later proved wrong). "Number of victims" is often a best guess done by collating proven victims w/claimed victims w/missing person reports w/alleged travels of the killer w/possible victims. Much less exact than "population of metropolitan areas." Soundguy99 16:38, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep -- verifiable list. - Longhair | Talk 18:43, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Unverifiable. Even for a serial killer as famous and well-researched as Jack the Ripper, the number of victims is not known. --Carnildo 21:44, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete inherently unverifiable. Serial killers have lots of reasons to lie -- to minimize their crime and possibly get off with a lesser sentence, or to make exaggerated claims to increase their reputation. No body count for any serial killer should be considered firmly established. carmeld1 00:59, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, not verifiable. Also, trivia != encyclopedic. Radiant_* 11:19, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, agree with Douglas and Meelar. -- Lochaber 13:10, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete In accord with Soundguy99. Denni☯ 01:00, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)
• Keep useful information.  Grue  12:27, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Ghoulish and in the worst possible taste. Content is not censored on wikipedia, and rightly so, but that doesn't mean we have present the information in such a low and base way (thats what tabloids and other forms of muckracking media are for). We already have a list of serial killers, and a category, we don't need this. Sabine's Sunbird 15:58, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Weak keep. -Sean Curtin 01:23, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Agree that Wikipedia should not endorse kill-scores. Also, not much chance of accuracy, which would be an excuse for the article. Decius 02:53, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep if only to demonstrate how little is known about these things. Add explanatory paragraph, and have a table for reputed an another for "known". Also indicate that this is murder rather than killing we are talking about. Rich Farmbrough 20:22, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete because the list is largely incomplete and inaccurate. Matjlav 01:56, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.