Talk:Stampede

Love Parade disaster

That what happened in Duisburg was clearly not a stampede. People were frightened by the tunnel and were searching for an alternative route to get out of that mess. Fear was at such a high level that people were kicking, punching and shoving those around them to get more space. If it was a stampede why did the crowd did not get any step further?

I think one should not rush into publishing the number of people killed because the number currently being reported by the media is not "final" so to say. This evening another person died due to injuries suffered at the parade. The same is true for the number of injured. Wikipedia is not a news media. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.226.86.71 (talk) 18:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Chronological order

The list of stampedes should be in reverse chronological order. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.157.27 (talk) 21:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Why? There seems to be far too much reverse chronological ordering of things on the Internet, which makes it very difficult to follow things logically and in order. This seems to be a relatively new phenomenon which I hardly ever saw in any print media prior to the Internet becoming popular.

Unless there's a compelling reason to the contrary (and I find it difficult to think of one), I think events and other time-based details should be listed in forward order - the order they actually happened in. It's unnatural, and sometimes confusing, to read about recent events first, then go back to earlier ones. M.J.E. (talk) 11:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Hillsborough

The Hillsborough Disaster was not a human stampede, it was a human crush.

Agree with anon above. I'm removing it but will link it here so it can be made available for anyone who wants to see why Plutonium27 (talk) 23:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC) LINK Hillsborough disaster

This page covers both stampedes and crushes. 64.142.90.33 (talk) 07:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

This link and reference of Hillsborough to Human Stampedes needs to be taken down immediately. The Hillsborough Independent Report has proven that there was no 'stampede' at Hillsborough. By including Hillsborough under the banner of 'human stampede' you are suggesting a falsehood. Please remove this link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lynnefox (talk • contribs) 19:06, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Portuguese

The link to the Portuguese Wiki is wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.86.168.15 (talk) 14:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

1990 Hajj disaster

Could we include the 1990 hajj stampede that killed 1,426? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.98.209.196 (talk) 23:18, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Cattle stampedes

This article is a little unbalanced, it talks mostly about human stampedes, but very little about cattle stampedes, or even stampedes in the wild, hence even though the info on cattle stampedes is not very much, at least it's a start. Ll1324 (talk) 00:53, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

1934 Kyoto

There's a citation needed tag on the January 8, 1934 stampede at Kyoto station; I found this but it's a pay to view article so I can't see anything other than the headline. Since I can't see what it actually confirms, I'm putting it here in case anybody with access would like to add it. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0C10FC3559177A93CBA9178AD85F408385F9 MorganaFiolett (talk) 11:18, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Same story, but free article. (Lord Gøn (talk) 20:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC))

Birmingham, Alabama, 1902

If anyone's interested, there was a stampede in the Shiloh Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, which left 115 people dead. Here's an article about the incident by the New York Times. (Lord Gøn (talk) 20:49, 4 May 2010 (UTC))

Rhinos

Rhinos are mentioned in the lead paragraph. They're not herd animals, so can they be said to stampede? Charge, more like! Rojomoke (talk) 09:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Spin-off

Shouldn't Human stampede have a separate article? Just the list of human stampedes is far longer than the entire bit on animal stampedes. Should we merge, say, Human sexuality and Animal sexuality? Thought not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.6.96.22 (talk) 08:27, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. When I want to learn about human stampedes, I'll look for an article called Human Stampedes. I think this article is more on human stampedes than on animal stampedes, and it bothers me. I don't want to have to sift through information that is related but not pertaining to the article on hand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.38.67.196 (talk) 05:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Concur. Maybe move this section and redirect to

Main article: List of human crushes

, and retitle that? That list is pretty thorough.

Children in a Nightclub?

Noticed one curious entry:

    December 21, 2001: 7 children, 10 to 14 years of age, were crushed to death due to a stampede on the stairway, leading to the entrance of a nightclub in Sofia, Bulgaria

I clicked on the link to learn more, but it's not in English. Why were there children at the entrance to a nightclub? If anyone can read the link, please answer. Curiosity is getting the better of me. Thanks. Van Vidrine (talk) 14:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

A lot of clubs have children's nights where they don't serve alcohol and parents chaperone...it's basically like a school-dance type atmosphere but it makes the kids feel cool for being in a club, plus the clubs get paid big-time because these often "pack the house" even when they double the door-charge 66.214.218.24 (talk) 02:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality of this word...

I would caution against using this word for human disasters. It seems that it's always the developing world where the media declares a stampede and the developed world where the media declares a disaster. My own feelings about this word associate it with animals, as does most dictionaries. I believe the connatation isn't neutral when you look through the list and see countries with white people described as tragedies/disasters, but the word for Asians, Muslims, and dark skinned people tends to be stampede...Youbetterwork (talk) 07:33, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Most crowd disasters are not due to Stampedes

Most disasters listed in the article are not due to Stampedes, where mass panic breaks out and people rush headlong into a choke point and get crushed. Researchers looking into the Love Parade Disaster discovered a hitherto unrecognised crowd dynamical process that can kill people in large crows - the Crowd Quake.

Essentially, in normal crowd there is personal space between people, even in quite crowded situations there is room to breath and move even a little bit. This personal space accommodates and cushions any mass movement. However, at a critical point of density there is no personal space at all around people, they are in full body contact on all sides. In this new situation, random fluctuations in crowd movement and jostling efficiently transmits extreme forces through the crowd - the Crowd Quake or Crowd Turbulence. It is akin to changing a compressible gas into an incompressible solid, unfortunately people are not incompressible.

This is why crowd disasters happen so suddenly, why external observers and survivors mistakenly think the sudden transition from normality to panic is due to a stampede. The article needs allot of work to clear up this mess. Ref: Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster [1] --Diamonddavej (talk) 18:38, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

You are quite correct, and there is a lively discussion on Talk:2015 Mina stampede among editors who are arguing whether the article should be changed to "2015 Mina disaster". Although use of the word "stampede" is universally condemned by experts on crowd behavior and progressive crowd collapse events, it seems to be the preferred term when UK and USA-based journalists describe crowd collapse disasters in the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Far East. Consciously or not, it seems important for Western journalistic organizations to vilify these victims, particularly if the contexts of their deaths involve religious rituals or pilgrimages. Imagine calling the "Hillsborough disaster" the "Hillsborough stampede"; what could be more dehumanizing? Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 15:18, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

RfC opened for use of "stampede" to describe human crowd disasters

I opened an RfC at Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch to discuss the use of the word "stampede" in article titles and content concerning human crowd disasters. It might be of interest to people reading this article. Dcs002 (talk) 09:51, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Stampede vs. crush

There is discussion above about crushes not being stampedes. Maybe it is time to separate this article into "Stampede" (mostly about animals, a little about humans, with a comment that most events called stampedes are actually crushes) and "Crowd crush" (at present a REDIRECT here)? Pol098 (talk) 17:00, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Pol098, Stampedes and crushes are not the only types of deadly crowd disasters. There are also progressive crowd collapses (mentioned in this article) and crowd turbulence (also called crowd quakes), which can cause both crushes and collapses. Crushes can also cause crowd collapses, but they don't always. Defining each term will be important, as will discussing causation. (E.g., overcrowding in a limited space can cause crowd turbulence, which can cause a crush (not always) or a crowd collapse (not always) or both, both of which can cause crush (or compression) asphyxia.)

There is an interview with a Liverpool fan on an ESPN documentary on the Hillsborough Disaster who said crowd turbulence (he didn't call it that - he described it) used to be common in the standing areas ("Kop End" at Anfield), but it was part of the experience. As the area was not confined into pens at the time, the pressure could be relieved, and it wasn't perceived as dangerous.

I think an important aspect of such an article should include how they are reported. This includes your point about the use of the word "stampede," but also how under-reported they are (e.g., between the First- and Second Ibrox Disasters, there were another three serious crushes, one deadly (2 or 3 dead - can't remember now), and dozens injured), with proper sourcing of course.

I think there is enough material to start a new article. I'd be happy to get that going. We have plenty of RS, and in this article, I think this discussion is maybe undue weight that should be made into its own article, and confine the human stampede section to events that were true stampedes, preferably stampedes that will be non-controversially termed as such. Dcs002 (talk) 23:51, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

have absolutely no disagreement with you. When I started editing in this vein, Stampede didn't have any section acknowledging crushes (though the distinction was made, and crushing was discussed). I edited the material and added headings, adding a reference to progressive crowd collapse. I also created Crowd collapse as redirect to the crush section of this article (not ideal, but better than nothing), and edited several articles in a way I thought more appropriate. I'd tend to group phenomena causing harm by crushing as Crowd crush (that's just what I think, and I'm perfectly happy about any other reasonable position); the mechanism of harm is crushing (and not trampling), although the various dynamics of the crowd that cause crushes are different. If the sections get too big it could be separated out. Quite a lot of articles linking to Stampede would need changing. Crowd control, an article I've edited a bit, would also come under this project. Your suggestion about separating undue weight and so on is exactly what I think, and tried to say in my original, very brief, comment. I personally am not an expert on the subject, but would like to see it treated properly—it's important, and usually dismissed by those actually responsible as a stampede of the stupid. Pol098 (talk) 10:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Pol098, you and I both need to be careful about righting great wrongs, I think. I am interested in how under-reported crowd disasters and their causes are, and you are interested in the false "stampede of the stupid" mentality. These are both very valid social concerns of course, and I think very few people who have studied the issue even a little would disagree. I'm just saying we need to be vigilant against our own biases and try not to advocate for social change. It's ok that we have biases. Everybody does. We just need to acknowledge them and do our best to keep them in check. (I am definitely speaking to both of us.)

I have taken on another project just now, and it will be a week or so before I can get to this one. There is a great deal of academic literature (primary and secondary) and a fair amount of press coverage of the whole topic, so creating a good, comprehensive, RS-based article should be relatively straightforward. Dcs002 (talk) 23:16, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you are all racist or stupid (possibly both?) but this article certainly is. Not sure why you are all ignoring the discussion on this page. There seems to be *very active* resistance to making it better. Crushed in space — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.154.152.214 (talk) 22:49, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Believe me, we are working on it. A lot of us want to make it better. Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 14:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree with User:Pol098 that we should consider splitting stampedes and crowd (or human) crushes. The article does a fairly good job of pointing out that they are not the same thing. Stampedes don't always lead to crushing incidents, and crushes may occur without a stampede. Packing too may people into a space causes crushes regardless of whether there is any stampede. It seems to me that the term "crowd crushes" is bit more common than "human crushes" but I didn't dig very far. If we create a new article for crushes whichever title is chosen will require a redirect form the other term.

Victim blaming

In the "Crushes" section is the following
A common aftermath of a crush with serious consequences is that those responsible for the event where the crush took place, authorities such as police and government bodies, and news media blame the crowd and the victims for being out of control and causing the crush, sometimes to the extent of a full cover-up. Later analysis, sometimes after those actually responsible have retired, may show that the disaster was largely caused (in the moral and legal rather than physical sense) by actions of those planning or in authority of the event, as in the Hillsborough disaster which killed 96 football spectators; actions by the crowd were blamed until investigations three decades later found manifold errors by those responsible for organising and controlling the football event, with members of the crowd being hapless victims.
The reference given relates only to Hillsborough. There is no citation for the statement that victim blaming is a "common aftermath". None of the examples given in the "Examples of crushes and stampedes" seems to demonstrate such victim blaming (this is not to say authorities did not try to avoid blame, but they apparently didn't blame the crushes on the victims). Therefore IMO the para quoted is OR and POV. (Of course victim blaming did occur in relation to Hillsborough, I'm just saying it's not shown to be a "common" occurrence.) Comments? Newburyjohn (talk) 12:32, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Agree that the section as-is lacks enough such examples or references to make the statement that such is common. However, I wouldn't call it OR and/or POV, but rather, very, very under-referenced. There are many sources stating such a thing is, indeed, common.

• "[But] almost no one speaks for the crowd, and the crowd usually takes the blame." The New Yorker
• "A common reaction – indeed the usual reaction – is to evoke the idea of an indiscriminate mob, of mass panic. To blame, in short, the crowd." The Guardian
• "Pressure is the primary horror of a crowd crush. Not panic. And until we accept that, we will keep having more of them. Because blaming the crowd lifts the onus of responsibility off the officials tasked with managing the crowd and puts it on the backs of the dead." Amanda Ripley's site. Technically a blog, but a blog by an investigative journalist, not Joe Random. Still, of all sources probably not the best, either.
• "We often see sensational headlines, like “Panic”, “Stampede” but when you analyse the facts the crowd is rarely the cause of major incidents. The reports below highlight how often these media words are used in reports. It is both misleading and misinforming the public on causality of major incidents, propagating the myth of of panic, diverting attention away from systematic failure of organisations to provide a safe environment for places of public assembly." G. Keith Still, Professor of Crowd Science at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)
• "When talking about crowd disasters, public media often use the term ‘mass panic’, which suggests the occurrence of a stampede as reason of the disaster. This suggests that crowd disasters happen, because the crowd ‘goes mad’." article in EPJ Data Science

I'll hunt down a few more potential references and such when I get the time, as I have to step away from the computer for a bit. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 03:54, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

"Victim blaming"? You see umpty-dozen hundred people packed into a small area. You enter said small area. You get crushed. How are you not responsible? You don't have to enter. --Khajidha (talk) 12:27, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

It's the pressure of the later arrivals that increases the density of the crowd of earlier arrivals so that falls and surges become deadly. These can be out of sight of the later arrivals, who may be unaware that there are "umpty-dozen hundred people packed into a small area", may not themselves enter "the small area" and will often not "get crushed". It's often difficult therefore to hold those late arrivals responsible but it's inappropriate to call earlier arrivals (such as ticket-holders taking their places at the front of a grandstand) responsible and tell them they didn't have to enter. 92.19.25.65 (talk) 14:28, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Links

Needs more links to other articles. I've done the work on the Cattle Stampedes section, can someone do more? If not, I will eventually continue. [[User:Dibbydib|Dibbydib]] ([[User talk: Dibbydib|talk!]]) ([[Special:Contributions/Dibbydib|contributions!]]) (talk) 07:15, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Your edit has been reverted, we do not link common English terms. See Wp:OVERLINK. Canterbury Tail talk 14:19, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

It is factually incorrect and potentially dangerous to conflate stampedes and crushes

These two should be separate articles. Crushes are not caused by people running in panic. Increasingly even mainstream press is no longer using the word "stampede" to describe crushes. Wikipedia should absolutely follow suit. --2A00:23C6:CC00:2000:89B2:5369:DDE3:29C3 (talk) 20:21, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed — the material on crushes now appears in a separate article called crowd crush. Einsof (talk) 02:56, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

No: Considering the amount of discussion here, this is hardly uncontroversial, and your action, simply hacking out 18Kb of material with little explanation, and re-labelling it crowd crush, is hardly ideal. So I have reverted it, per WP:BRD. If you want to split the article , then make a split proposal, saying what you want to move, and where to, and explain why. Moonraker12 (talk) 13:51, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

In your note on my talk page, which you have linked here, you accuse me of "effectively passing off the work of the editors at the [stampede] article as [my] own", citing attribution requirements on WP:CWW. In fact I satisfied these attribution requirements with appropriate edit summaries ([2] [3]). Objecting to the split on procedural grounds is one thing, but falsely accusing me of plagiarism is wholly unacceptable. Einsof (talk) 15:46, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

See Template:Copied, which should be on the talk page. We can argue about that if you wish, or you can address the issue, by explaining how and why the article should be split. Moonraker12 (talk) 18:08, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose. While there are some voices claiming that "stampede" is inadequate [4][5], many sources still use the term "stampede" without qualification, including an Nature article cited thousands of times [6], the New York Times [7], The Washington Post [8], the Wall Street Journal [9], AlJazeera [10], Reuters [11] and the Jerusalem Post [12]. WP:DUE applies to the idea that stampedes are rare or inexistent. JBchrch (talk) 16:58, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

(This is the same user as the IP editor above) If most reliable sources also use the word "stampede" it seems like the real issue here is that in general usage the word actually has two very different meanings. The recent event in Israel was not an "uncontrolled concerted running as an act of mass impulse... in an attempt to escape a perceived threat" and as far as I know no source has described it in terms even vaguely similar to this. It's not like the sources are lying about what happened, they all clearly describe a crowd crush, but do so using the word "stampede". The same is presumably true for pretty much all other recent crowd crush disasters. In fact I would guess that, at least when talking about humans, "stampede" almost never refers to the "uncontrolled running" definition in the context of news articles. If splitting isn't an option I instead think we should make clear in the lede that "stampede" refers to these two different phenomenon. There are already sources cited in this article that explain the confusion over the word and its two meanings. --Cyllel (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree entirely with the sentiment in the heading, but it is precisely because this conflation happens, with elements of the media routinely describing crush incidents as 'stampedes' that the two should be dealt with together, to put them in juxtaposition. We could also do with an article specifically on human crush incidents, as it is a subject in itself. But as there is currently no proposal to split this article, or any explanation of how or why such a split should occur, any further discussion on that subject is, I would suggest, academic. Moonraker12 (talk) 17:58, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

I think it's clear that a split proposal would fail because the preponderance of sources use "stampede" as a synonym of "crush" (at least when talking about humans). Therefore I propose that the two meanings of the word should be mentioned explicitly in the lead to reflect the sources. In fact it looks like most of the currently cited sources for this article use the word "stampede" to mean "crush", yet the lead only mentions the "uncontrolled concerted running" definition, a definition of the word that the media almost never uses. If we're going to agree with the media that "stampede" can also refer to crushes then the article should make that clear from the beginning.

Maybe adding something like this: "In popular usage 'stampede' also refers to situations in which people were injured or have died due to compression in very dense crowds. This is more properly known as a 'crowd crush' or 'crush'. --Cyllel (talk) 03:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

@Cyllel:: Regarding your comment, the preponderance of sources use of stampede as a synonym for crush; I think that's debatable. US media seems to, but UK media and others don’t so much. And academic sources use appropriate terms; when describing crush incidents they call them crushes, not stampedes. As for if we are going to agree with the media; that rather begs the question doesn’t it? This is an encyclopaedia, not a media outlet, so we should agree with the scientific wisdom as much as anything. And if media sources use misnomers we should point that out. I think your proposed addition doesn't go any way far enough. How about "Some media sources refer to situations... but this is a misnomer; the more appropriate term would be crush, or crowd collapse" (I'm not convinced about "crowd crush"; it seems to be a WP term). Thoughts? Moonraker12 (talk) 15:26, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Moonraker12: Thanks for your response, that wording looks good to me. I've gone ahead and added it to the article. --Cyllel (talk) 18:23, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Split proposal

Hello, I believe that the section Crushes and Prevention should be split into a new article called "Crowd crush" as they are out of focus. The main article Stampede and these sections are talking about different phenomena, and it has led to confusion on other talk pages, see above and Astroworld Festival crowd crush. As such this section should be split per WP:CONSPLIT. This has been going on for some time and should be dealth with. Swordman97 ^{talk to me} 23:33, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@2A00:23C6:CC00:2000:89B2:5369:DDE3:29C3, Cyllel, Moonraker, JBchrch, Einsof, Jim Michael, WWGB, and Pikavoom: @Moonraker12:

• Alternate proposal: create a new article called Crowd accidents (or similar, open to suggestion here) and use that for human stampedes and human crushes. On that article it can be stated that crushes and stampedes are separate events, but are often conflated and can occur simultaneously. This article can then remain focused specifically on the stampede concept but its primary focus can be on animal stampedes, with reference to the new article for the kind of event we're currently discussing. Retswerb (talk) 23:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello, I was more thinking that the crush material should be a different article, and seperate. Crushes cause Asphyxia whereas stampedes cause blunt tramua, and the underlying causes and mechanisms are quite diffrent. I would be fine with a "human stampede" article though. Swordman97 ^{talk to me} 23:56, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I would say there is functionally little difference between either proposal at this point, since this article contains almost no exposition on human stampedes in the proper sense—they are only mentioned in passing as a foil for crowd crushes. The only potential issue is what to do with the list section, which contains many (likely misnamed) reports of stampedes. In that case I suggest that section simply be deleted. We have a dedicated list (List of human stampedes and crushes) which both the stampede article and the new crowd crush article can link to. Einsof (talk) 00:23, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I think combining them into a single article accounts for the ambiguity that is common in public discussions on the subject(s) while giving a natural place for the two concepts to be individually described and differentiated. As has been recently pointed out, crushes and stampedes are commonly conflated in both RS and public discourse; combining their articles allows other articles to link to the general subject of disasters-of-this-nature rather than having to sort out minutia (difficult especially in historical cases where the differences may be impossible to discern). Retswerb (talk) 00:47, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Swordman97, I believe you were meaning to alert Moonraker12. Moonraker (talk) 00:49, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I like this, but I would be prefer having it called "Crowd disasters" instead. Some influential academics [13] have used this term to refer to this type of incident. Pilaz (talk) 15:52, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• Strong support for split. A stampede and a crowd crush are very different occurrences. A stampede happens when many people run to or from a target. Injuries are mainly due to trampling. A crush happens when excessive people move into a confined space. Injuries are mainly due to compression. To describe them both under stampede is just wrong and begs a false similarity. Even the stampede article reports "Some media sources refer to situations in which people were injured or have died due to compression in very dense crowds as a "stampede", but this is a misnomer; the more appropriate term would be crush, or crowd collapse." Let's fix it. WWGB (talk) 04:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

  That sentence was just recently added and does not represent a neutral position. In my dialect crowd crushes are not distinct from human stampedes, they are a type of human stampede. --Khajidha (talk) 20:26, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Not "just recently added", it has been there for more than six months.[14]. Sorry, but your "dialect" is not relevant. WWGB (talk) 02:27, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Sources use stampede and crowd crush interchangeably. For Astroworld Reuters has: Criminal probe opened into stampede at rap concert in Houston that killed 8, and it describes the events as: "A stampede of fans surging toward the stage during rap star Travis Scott's Astroworld music festival in Houston killed at least eight people and injured dozens more as panic rippled through the crowd of largely young concertgoers, officials said on Saturday.". It is also described as a "crowd surge", which is in between crush and stampede. The avoidance of stampede in some sources is based on appearances: ABC: "Why aren't people calling this a stampede? Professionals don't use the words "stampede" or "panic" to describe such scenarios because that can put the blame for the deaths on the people in the crowd. Instead, they more often point at the event's organizers for failing to provide a safe environment.". Stampede and crush are nearly synonymous. Pikavoom (talk) 06:50, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support, and redirect Human stampede to Crowd crush. An animal stampede is a completely different thing to what is sometimes referred to as a "human stampede." Ithinkiplaygames (talk) 07:55, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Actual human stampedes occur, as do events which are a combination of that & a crowd crush. Jim Michael (talk) 10:20, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Astute readers likely do not miss the irony that the crowd crush section of the "stampede" article contains passages like Academic experts who study crowd movements and crushing disasters oppose the use of the term "stampede". Some must surely conclude that if they want expert coverage of crowd crushes they should therefore look to another reference work. As written, the article itself is an effective argument for its being split. Einsof (talk) 13:12, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support Stampede and crowd crushes are separate concepts that shouldn't be conflated even if the media does so. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:44, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Even though I don't particularly like the word "crowd crush" either, it's certainly different from stampede. Crowd disaster ftw! Pilaz (talk) 17:57, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• Propose splitting all human related material to an article titled "Human stampede". In that article it can be detailed that some dialects distinguish so called true stampedes, crowd crushes, crowd collapses, etc and some do not. Descriptions of each type of event can be presented and the various events compared and contrasted. --Khajidha (talk) 20:23, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support. This is something that has bothered me for a while. I'd support either "Crowd crush" or a more general "Crowd injury". Most crowd-related injuries happen at slow speed, nothing like a stampede. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 03:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support. I strongly support moving this to Crowd Crush to its own article. I admire Wikipedia and the way it helps people learn about things when articles are worked on together. I am surprised that the concept of Crowd crush is within this article on stampedes since they are very different things. Human Stampedes are interesting. I don't know where they would fit in, but stampedes human stampedes are different than crowd crushes in a variety of ways that have been clear to me for many years. I also think that this imprecise use of language can be confusing and probably causes harm. There are arguments that stampede and crowd crush/ human crush are conflated and synonymous as a reason to oppose the break. I'm not sure that this matters because sometimes two things that are not the same thing become synonymous, so you have to make sure people can understand the difference, not just perpetuate confusion when there is proper terminology that is available and used by the people who study and think about it all the time. I also think it is more respectful because unlike when there is an inaccurate word and an accurate word but one they are equally respectful, I agree with people like John Seabrook writing in the New Yorker that stampede can be a charged word. Furthermore, this article is about stampedes in general across all animals. Humans are animals there is anything in this article about non human animals doing crowd crush type things. Also the article is pretty imbalanced. There are lots of animals that stampede and it focuses on cattle and humans, and then moves onto crowd crushes which are different things. --Hockeydogpizzapup (talk) 08:04, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Crowd crush/collapse needs to be a separate article, they have nothing to do with stampedes and honestly it's a joke that this is still being discussed, needs to be done ASAP 89.172.105.162 (talk) 00:13, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. This discussion is suffering from recentism because of widespread, intensive coverage of the crowd crush at the recent Astroworld Festival. Also, the general topic is already spread out among several articles, including, Crowd control, Crowd control barrier, Crowd manipulation, Riot control, Stampede, as well as the various list articles. I suggest: Let folks chime in with comments here, then wait a few months until the recentism wears off and reconsider a reorganization/consolidation of all of the various articles that already cover the topic. Sparkie82 (t•c) 02:14, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: Oppose this proposal as it stands (!Vote changed by Moonraker12 (talk) 22:10, 15 November 2021 (UTC) )

I agree we need a separate article on Crowd collapses and crushes, but just hacking out these two sections and renaming them isn't the answer. It’s happened before and didn’t end well... A fair amount of the Crushes section deals with the "factually incorrect and potentially dangerous conflation" of the two and that needs to stay here, to explain the difference. It’s definitely worth renaming the section to clarify that. As for content for a new article, some of the stuff here should go in it, but there’s more that needs saying (it’s been on my to-do list for a while and I’m no closer, so if anyone else wants a go I’ve put my sources here) We also need more of an explanation of human stampedes; the OED defines them as A sudden or unreasoning rush or flight of persons in a body or mass (which can include both panicky flight, and surge towards a desired goal), but those phenomena differ significantly from animal stampedes (for a start, when humans get spooked, they tend to scatter, or simply take cover, viz. here and here). Maybe we should start with an article on Crowd collapses and crushes and then think about merging stuff over, rather than this way round. Moonraker12 (talk) 03:03, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support. I think the split would be beneficial because there is enough information for two articles, and I actually came to the article because there was none on crowd crushing. The information would be much more on-topic on its own article, and injuries sustained in mobs are a noteworthy topic. The Council of Seraphim | speak before the Council 15:04, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

At WP:CR I requested an uninvolved editor close this discussion, as it has not received comment in more than a week. Einsof (talk) 21:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Split done

Hello, I went and Boldly did the split since the artice is already up and the discussion is basically dead. Swordman97 ^{talk to me} 04:27, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Split: Alternate proposal

@Swordman97, Einsof, Retswerb, Pilaz, WWGB, Khajidha, Pikavoom, Ithinkiplaygames, Jim Michael, Hemiauchenia, AntiCompositeNumber, Hockeydogpizzapup, 89.172.105.162, Sparkie82, and The Council of Seraphim: (Pinged 00:52, 16 November 2021; re-pinged, Moonraker12 (talk) 02:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC) )

Following on from the proposal (above) and my comments there I’ve cut the Gordian knot here and started a page on Crowd collapses and crushes. They are notable in their own right, without reference to stampedes (human or otherwise) and I’ve redirected Crowd collapse and Crowd crush to there. As far as this article goes, I suggest the Crushes section stay here, re-named as "Conflation of human stampedes and crowd crushes"; that the Prevention section be split out and moved to the Crowd collapse and crush article, and that the List section be deleted/merged with our existing List of human stampedes and crushes page. We also need more detail on the mechanics of human stampedes; Any thoughts? Moonraker12 (talk) 00:52, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

What should be done about articles that have stampede in their titles & article text, such as 2017 Turin stampede?

What should be done about the stampede category tree? Should it be renamed to crowd crushes, or to crowd crushes and stampedes, or should a new cat tree for crowd crushes be created? There's only one crowd crush cat, Category:Crowd crushes in 2021. Jim Michael (talk) 11:38, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jim Michael: I think those questions are bigger than what to do with this article here.

For myself, I think the science is pretty clear that in such incidents fatalities are primarily due to crowd crush/collapse, even when fleeing away/surgeing towards something is a factor, and that the word stampede is pejorative/lazy journalism. I think we need some explanation of the term human stampede, (I’ve put some notes, sources, etc here) and this article is as good a place as any.

Where we have articles on such incidents I’d favour descriptive, non-judgemental titles (using terms like incident, disaster, or crowd disaster) rather than stampede, even if that’s the term the media uses for it; particularly when the description and the sources indicate that crowd collapse or crush was the main cause of death or injury.

As for categories, I think using the title Human stampedes and crushes, in line with the List pages, or something neutral, like Crowd disasters, would be less contentious, and would favour re-naming the existing categories in line with that. Moonraker12 (talk) 02:59, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I think it better that consensus is reached in regard to how to describe these events & how to categorise them before going ahead with changing many articles titles, their text & the category tree. That's why I raised those points here. Jim Michael (talk) 10:25, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jim Michael: Fair enough; It would be worth posting those questions in a general discussion, below. Do you have any thoughts on the split proposal here? Moonraker12 (talk) 15:32, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The creation of crowd collapses and crushes is an improvement, although that article needs to be improved significantly. Jim Michael (talk) 16:52, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I raised the issue of the cat tree in the section below this one before mentioning it as well as other articles with stampede in their titles in this section. We need to be consistent in how we describe these events in titles, article text & cats. Jim Michael (talk) 16:52, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

This new article attempt isn't even close to production-ready and belongs in draft space. The lede claims that crowd disasters are invariably the product of failures in management, which is a strong (and likely contentious) statement presented without attribution or citation. Of the five references cited, one is an utterly inscrutable compendium of first-person reminiscences about a football stadium... not one, as far as I can tell, where a crowd disaster occurred, but the total lack of context makes it difficult to discern. And why do readers need to be told that Most people [...] will be comfortable at certain distances with others, depending on their relationship.? Overall, the coverage of the topic is a clear step down from the material that we have in the current stampede article, and in my opinion is not of sufficient quality to live outside draft space. Einsof (talk) 15:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your opinion; if you have criticisms of the CC&C article I suggest you raise them on the talk page there and I will endeavour to answer them. Or, if you feel you can do better, feel free to write your own articles on these subjects. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:58, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

You split the article before the discussion was closed, and you voted oppose? I agree with Einsof, there are a lot of MOS:WEASEL violations here. Swordman97 ^{talk to me} 20:39, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, I haven’t split this article at all; the text is all still here, as is the Split proposal (to which I am proposing an alteration). What I have done is post a long-overdue article on Crowd collapses and crushes (which are notable in themselves), using what sources I could find. If you feel it is weaselly, please explain on the talk page there and I will try to answer. And I opposed the split proposal as it stood for the reasons I gave above: The crush section belongs here, to explain the conflation with stampedes. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the main concern is the conflation of "crowd crush" with "stampede", and not necessarily the absence of a separate article on crowd collapse and crush. Here are some related articles I've found and their approximate sizes:

Crowd control - 6 paragraphs

Crowd control barrier - 2 paragraphs

Crowd_manipulation - full article

Riot control - full article

Stampede - full article

Crowd collapses and crushes (proposed) - 6 paragraphs

plus a few separate list articles for some of the above

My concern is that we've got a bunch articles that are closely related, yet most of them are little more than stubs. I think it makes sense to combine some these related stubs into a real article with each of the topics in a section or with some other appropriate organization. We could have redirects to that main, combined article from the names of the articles from which it is composed, including the proposed article. When all these articles are separate as they are now, it makes it more difficult to organized the information, editors may not know about the other related articles when they find one of them and then they may make redundant or inappropriate edits, and readers find it more difficult to find the information when it's spread out over a bunch of tiny articles. Maintenance is more difficult with separate articles too.

I agree that "stampede" should not be confused with "Crowd crush", but I don't think creating another tiny article on the subject is the way to fix it.

Also, I still think the recent event related to the topic is influencing judgement about how to proceed (WP:RECENTISM), and it might be better to wait and address the issue after some more time has passed, before making a final decision and putting a bunch of work into something that, after more time and reflection, may not be the best choice. Sparkie82 (t•c) 03:52, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Moonraker12: There is no consensus to create the new article that you created. Could you please move that article to Draft:Crowd collapses and crushes (or some other location) as a WP:Draft until there is a consensus as to how handle the proposal. Sparkie82 (t•c) 01:32, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Any editor is entitled to create a new article. I happen to like it. For those who don't, there are remedies available to delete or merge it. Anyway, nothing has yet been split from Stampede. WWGB (talk) 02:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

@Sparkie82: The reason I wrote this (and it’s been in the offing for months, now, so it is hardly recentism) was to avoid the repeated proposals (viz. this, or this, or this) to chop sections out from this page every time a crush event hits the news and people realize we don’t actually have an article on the subject. But if you think it is un-necessary, take it to AfD: Or, when (and if) this split ever takes place you can always propose they be merged as overlap.

And I don’t share your view that small articles have to be merged together to make big ones. There’s nothing wrong with a small article that says what there is to be said. Anyway, it’s a work in progress (I’m just kind of waiting for the hostility to be resolved). Moonraker12 (talk) 18:56, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Here are a bunch more articles on crowds:

Crowd counting - 3 paragraphs

Crowd analysis - several paragraphs

Crowd scene - 2 sentences

Crowd surfing - several sentences

Crowd simulation - complete article

Crowd - several paragraphs

Crowd abuse - just 2 paragraphs

Crowd psychology - full atricle

Crowd#Movement dynamics - stub section in Crowd article

We don't need another tiny article about crowds. I'm okay with differentiating crush from stampede, but we certainly don't need to fragment this topic any more than it is already. We should consolidate these articles and pack as many of these as we can into just a single main article with links to sub-articles only if they have enough content for those to stand on their own (and right now many of them don't, including the proposed article). Sparkie82 (t•c) 02:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Crowd#Movement dynamics is a promising location for crowd crush material if there isn't consensus for a standalone article. The new article is a redundant content fork, and one that is vastly inferior to the current material we have in the stampede article. It belongs in draft space until it's in a presentable state (i.e., its quality meets or exceeds the current material we have in the stampede article, at which point that material would be removed), or else the article should simply be deleted. Einsof (talk) 02:30, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Einsof: Don't just sugar-coat it, be blunt: If you don’t like the article I posted, then take it to AfD, if you have a case. Moonraker12 (talk) 19:05, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Sparkie82: As for merging all the crowd articles into one big lump, I note they belong to a wide variety of categories (entertainment, policing, psychology), so I don’t see they belong together on a page just because they have the word "Crowd" in the title. What are you actually proposing? Moonraker12 (talk) 19:07, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

No one has suggested putting "all the crowd articles" into one article. Please reread what I said. I didn't make a specific proposal for specific articles, rather, I'm responding to these split proposals and suggesting that there are already too many tiny related articles and instead of creating another fork article on the topic, we should probably do the opposite -- combine these fragments into one article. Most likely one of the existing crowd articles would serve as a target article for such a merger.

I agree with you that stampedes should not be conflated with crushes, but forking off another article isn't the way to fix it. Instead we should pick a target article for the merger of some of the crush articles (including the draft article, Crowd collapses and crushes) and open up a proposal for merger on that target article's talk page. Sparkie82 (t•c) 10:07, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm OK with with splitting all human crowd crush\collapse\stampede events into a separate article. In many human events the exact terminology is inaccurate and in many cases "all of the above" apply to a single event. Pikavoom (talk) 07:37, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

This article and the proposal are not about "events", they're about concepts. There is already a separate article about events: List of human stampedes and crushes. Sparkie82 (t•c) 10:07, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

• This absolutely makes sense to me. Within that article the various types can be differentiated from each other but having a single page talking about these often-related events would be far preferable to having the information spread out. Retswerb (talk) 06:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

This is not about events. (see above).Sparkie82 (t•c) 10:07, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Pikavoom:, Retswerb: So are you saying you are opposed to the original split proposal (above) to move the Crush and Prevention sections to a new article on Crowd crushes, and also opposed to this proposal, to re-name the Crush section and to move out the Prevention and List sections? Because "splitting all human crowd crush\collapse\stampede events into a separate article" is a different proposition altogether. Do you want to open a new Split proposal for that, now? Moonraker12 (talk) 00:55, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, backed up by sources using stampede and sources saying they don't use stampede to avoid victim blaming, in the human case stampedes, crowed surges, and crowd collapses are used almost interchangeably to describe the same events. I suggest separating the human crowd dynamics from the animal article, and detailing the varying terminology inside the human article. For animals "crowd surge" or "crowd collapsed" is not a term that is used, for humans yes. Human crowd control is different from animal herding. Pikavoom (talk) 06:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed ([15]). The article should differentiate between the two but also state that the two terms are in common usage to describe crowd crush events. Combining the two concepts into one article allows for the relevant information for either/both to be consolidated into one logical location. Retswerb (talk) 01:40, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I created a move request for the draft article here. Sparkie82 (t•c) 02:02, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Cats

Should articles about crowd crushes be included in stampede cats? Should the stampede cats be renamed to include crushes, or should there be a separate category tree for crushes? Jim Michael (talk) 10:20, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Cats? Moonraker12 (talk) 03:06, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Shorthand for "categories". --Khajidha (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This discussion has been reopened at talk:Crowd collapses and crushes# Stampede categories: rename, replace, something else?. Contribution welcome, please. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 06:52, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

On the subject of "human stampedes" and crowd crushes

This article appears to be a victim of an attempt at righting a great wrong - namely, not calling events in which fatalities and casualties occur in large crowds of people "stampedes," so as to not victim blame. However, this practice is seemingly at odds with how such events are recorded in the whole body of reliable sources.

First, just looking at general usage of some terms: "Human stampede" and "crowd crush" have shared a similar amount of usage for quite some time.[16] It's only in recent years that "crowd crush" sees more usage than the former - likely a result of the media joining the campaign with their reporting, to reduce usage of "stampede".[17] HOWEVER. The usage of the general term "stampede" far outstrips the use of either of these terms, both historically and today.[18][19]. Either events like "human stampedes" are a VERY small part of the general topic of "stampedes," or people tend to make no distinction between "human" or "animal" when thinking or talking about stampedes. That should be kept in mind.

Second, NOT ALL events like this are "crowd crushes" by definition. The very same crowd casualty event (Itaewon Halloween disaster) has been described as a crowd crush, a crowd surge, and a stampede, all by reliable sources. Sometimes, two articles by the same RS each use a different predominant term (NPR [20] [21]). One could argue that there is distinction between them based on the means of death/casualty infliction - a "stampede" is where people die by trampling, and a "crush" is where people die by suffocating - but as far as I've seen, reliable sources are not making those distinctions reliably. Until they do, Wikipedia articles need to conform to WP:V and WP:NPOV, balancing what can be gleaned from reliable sources.

In my opinion, the ideal way to tackle this would be to have 2 articles: One for "stampede", which would be primarily about the behavior seen in animals; and one for "crowd casualty events", which would be about crowd surges and crushes, and "stampedes" as they apply to groups of people. The "stampede" article could have minimal body information about human stampedes, and instead redirect somehow to the other article. But however this article content is handled, the phrase "human stampede" should not be unduly minimized in any way, according to WP:BALANCE and WP:DUE.

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents after doing some digging into the matter (sources consulted: [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]) I may make edits along those lines myself incrementally. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:05, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

There's a category tree for stampedes, but the cats by year & location are being added & removed due to people disagreeing whether they apply or not. In Nov 21, I tried in the section above this to solve that issue, but got nowhere. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 13:29, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Here are 2 other articles from highly reliable sources (Associated Press and Deutsche Welle) that use the term "stampede" for a crowd-related mass casualty event.

Also: The Guardian published this article where they appear to discourage use of the term "stampede" (if we could stop calling them “stampedes”... then crowd crushes might stop happening); however, they themselves use the term when describing some such events, as with this article. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 15:03, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

That Guardian article is the same Associated Press news-wire, not Guardian journalism originated. But they did print it "as is". --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:56, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

My primary concern is with the nomenclature that Wikipedia uses: the category issue is incidental. It just happens that, in the course of following up those categories, I found many articles where the term "stampede" was being used despite the body of the sources showing no evidence for a stampede but clear evidence of a crush. The fundamental point we need to address is how Wikipedia should describe these events in Wikivoice: the issues of WP:RGW, WP:Verifiability, WP:SYNTH (and even WP:VNT, which is a guidance not a policy) all arise. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:56, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Any article called "stampede" where a majority of cited sources call the event a "crush" could be renamed. That seems like a no-brainer. Though I'd hold off on removing it from any "stampede" categories, unless it's going into another category for "crushes", for now - just as a matter of preserving documentation.

However, for any event, even if there is no evidence for a stampede but clear evidence of a crush, we shouldn't differ from the sources in wikivoice. If the sources call it a stampede, so should we. I do see the issue in this case, and I'm not sure yet if I LOVE echoing media outlets verbatim. But that's just how Wikipedia works - verifiability, not necessarily truth. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 16:13, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe that it would be reasonable to argue that there is distinction between them based on the means of death/casualty infliction - a "stampede" is where people die by trampling, and a "crush" is where people die by suffocating because asphyxiated people end up on the ground and are trampled unwillingly by the surge acting as a fluid. A true stampede fatality would be where someone fell and was carelessly trampled on by free runners, as when people are trampled on by bulls (not other people) in the "Running of the bulls" in Pamplona. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:05, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Some media sources wrongly insist that people never stampede. However, if people are trampled on the ground by other people who are running from danger, that's a stampede. In some cases, a disaster includes some people being crushed in a crowd & others being trampled in a stampede as people flee. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 16:56, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Except that the experts say that this behaviour is unknown. In fact, they say, people put themselves at risk to help the fallen. See the citations in the article. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:48, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

As far as I've been able to tell, there is no such expert consensus on the matter.

It's true that there are some expert voices saying that stampedes simply don't happen, or when they do the trampling injuries are non-fatal. However, I'm seeing only one scholarly work being cited for this: Cocking, Drury, and Reicher. And the citation to that work isn't even explicitly supporting the claim that stampedes don't happen; only the claim that people remain rational and help each other in emergency situations.

The only other expert voices here are given in articles from the Guardian: Keith Still and Edwin Galea. We should be careful using news sources to derive a conclusion of scholarly fact - expert voices, when consulted in the writing of a news article, are usually quoted in a very limited way, that applies primarily to the story being reported. For example, if a crowd crush event is being widely labeled a stampede, it's entirely rational for The Guardian to call in an expert, and then quote them saying "stampedes don't happen" ("not like this" being implied).

As I've said, looking to the whole body of RS, stampedes apparently do happen, and people are apparently trampled to death. We can't use a handful of experts to determine on our own that scholarly consensus directly contradicts what reliable news sources are publishing. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:27, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

That's Keith Still, who is Professor of Crowd Science at Manchester Metropolitan University and Edwin Galea, Professor of Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Greenwich. The Guardian articles are not "news sources" in the sense of the AP News-wire above but considered reporting of experts. I assume that your are not suggesting that the Guardian malreported their work? (Yes, I agree it would be good to have their relevant journal articles, but I doubt it would change anything.) And here is another expert opinion:

John Drury, an expert on the social psychology of crowd management at the University of Sussex, says crowd crush disasters usually involve three interlinked factors: overcrowding, waves or movement in an already extremely dense crowd, and crowd collapse. When there is an obstruction, the effects are exacerbated. "My impression is that all of these factors were present at Itaewon this Halloween," he says. "First, it’s apparent that density was over five people per square metre, which is very dangerous. Second, there were waves of people that lifted people off their feet. When people are closely packed together, a small movement can ripple through the crowd and cause further pressure. Third, I understand that there was a crowd collapse as some people fell over and others fell on top of them."

— Crowd crushes: how disasters like Itaewon happen, how can they be prevented, and the 'stampede' myth" [33]

and elsewhere in the Benedictus report we find Paul Torrens, a professor at the Center for Geospatial Information Science at the University of Maryland, remarking that "the idea of the hysterical mass is a myth".

So we have sixseven experts saying one thing and I have yet to see any RS saying otherwise? Would you provide a sample from your whole body of RS, please?

Certainly people are found dead on the ground after these events and almost certainly have injuries consistent with being trampled on. But it is far more likely that they were already dead from asphyxiation when that happened. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:23, 28 April 2023 (UTC) updated to add Torrens (UMD). --14:27, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

You're overrepresenting your count of expert voices, in relation to what you're claiming all these experts say. John Drury says nothing of stampedes in your quote - he's just talking generally about crushes. You can't infer that Drury believes that stampedes don't happen based on the quote from him provided. And while the article that citation comes from talks about "the stampede myth", the expert the Guardian is quoting here is again Edwin Galea.

In terms of determining reliability of scholarly analysis, academic consensus would be the gold standard, consensus from multiple independent scholars would be preferred, and the opinion of a single scholar, even a well-respected one, should be used cautiously. It looks like there MAY be academic consensus on this - this Guardian article explicitly says that in the "small but growing field [of crowd behavior], this is now the consensus view", and they cite Still, Galea, Dirk Helbing (computing professor at ETH Zurich), and Paul Torrens (professor at the Center for Geospatial Information Science at the University of Maryland). But one news article isn't a rock-solid basis for demonstrating academic consensus.

Even if there IS academic consensus on this, there is apparently NO SUCH CONSENSUS among news organizations - as I noted above, plenty of well-respected RS of news are referring to some events as stampedes, in apparent contradiction to the scholars that say "stampedes don't happen" or "when they do, they're not fatal." This has to be considered, and balanced against scholarly sources.

There is no official "ranking of reliability" when it comes to source types - only a list of them over at WP:SOURCETYPES. That guideline is written and formatted in a way that suggests the source types higher up are generally preferred, but that preference is not explicit. So when comparing WP:SCHOLARSHIP versus WP:NEWSORG sources, one isn't more valid than the other. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 16:51, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

The intro to sourcetypes seems to me to suggest that academic sources are preferred, then good quality media, then the rest. So yes, there is a hierarchy. The Guardian articles are not "hot news" items, they are considered journalism, published in a high-quality newspaper, which is reporting the consensus of subject experts, per WP:secondary. So they are of higher quality than immediate event reports, even in the same paper. NB that none says that stampedes don't happen, only that they are exceptionally rare. For example, the recent event in Sana'a, Yemen was originally believed to be a crush for alms but subsequently recognised as a stampede to escape gunfire and explosion.

I have no doubt that the common name is still "stampede" and that typically it will persist in most media for another 20 years (50 in the Daily Telegraph). We have ample evidence that media prefer click-bait headlines, to the extent that there we have a policy deprecating their use "as is", but right now most papers still repeat "stampede" in the body.

So it is certainly a WP:RGW violation to change the name of articles that use that word but it is certainly reasonable to record that the consensus of experts disagrees with the sloppy nomenclature. When an outlet uses the term "stampede" to describe what is obviously a crush in front of the stage at a pop concert, ipso facto it is not a reliable source. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:44, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Regarding WP:SOURCETYPES, the only places I found that explicitly suggest a hierarchy in which scholarly sources are higher are: Scholarly sources... are generally better than news reports for academic topics - but crowd crushes/stampedes are not a purely academic topic (whereas "crowd science" would moreso be); and When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. However, some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternative theories, controversial within the relevant field, or largely ignored by the mainstream academic discourse because of lack of citations - it's apparent that the 4th criteria almost certainly applies in this case, and the 2nd or 3rd may be true as well.

Anyways, you have the right of it - news sources still use the word "stampede" to describe events. It's also fully valid to include rebuttals from all the scholars and other news sources cited. But article content needs to adhere to WP:NPOV, in particular WP:BALANCE. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 19:55, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, the guideline above includes as examples of scholarly sources "academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks" - notably, NOT journalism or news articles for which scholars are consulted. This is why I said earlier that the "Cocking, Drury, and Reicher" paper is a higher-quality source of scholarly material than the articles in which Still and Galea are cited. If you could find published papers or books by either of those two, those would be higher-quality sources with which to define their positions. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 20:04, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

In Media/Pop Culture

An IP hopper appears to desperately want there to be a section of trivial pop culture examples of stampedes. Not only is it wholly unsourced, it is original reasearch and violates the WP:MOS. Please read the MOS:POPCULT and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 13:33, 7 February 2024 (UTC)