Talk:Senseless violence

The cases

At least the following cases are defined as "meaningless violence":

1. Murder on the 16 year old kid of Nigerian descent
2. Joe Van Holsbeeck who was murdered
3. The skinhead assault, which resulted into one person in a coma
4. The chasing of the Morrocan who drowned afterwards
5. Hans Van Temsche's murders
6. The beating of Guido D. on the bus after which he died
7. The killed homeless person 'without any reason' in Marche-en-Famenne, see: [1] Sijo Ripa 12:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The Dutch wikipedia has a nice table, maybe that should be included here, including the text on 'media hype' etc. Intangible 13:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Should the bit on case 6 be updated? After all, officials did say the man didn't die of a heart attack. --Ganchelkas 19:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Page name

Perhaps the pagename can be adapted to mention the specific year 2006 as the term is older than 2006. However note that you'll find an enormous increase in the use of the term since the events of 2006 on google (.be), on the Belgian tv news, in Belgian newspapers, etc. Also quite a few specific groups and events are organized in an effort against this term since 2006. Sijo Ripa 02:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Article title

I strongly urge that this article be renamed Useless violence or Pointless violence, which is a correct translation of zinloos. Meaningless can have the appearance to mean unimportant, insignificant. See any Dutch-English dictionary to check my point. 1652186 19:13, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

What about just using the Dutch term instead, Zinloos geweld, as article title? Intangible 19:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia policy is to use a translation if possible. As that is possible in this case, I would go for "Pointless Violence". Sijo Ripa 20:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Because of the commonplace English use of the phrase "Senseless violence," this article seems strangely specific to another culture from the perspective of an English speaking readership. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.197.145 (talk) 20:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be best to retitle this article with something like "Use of senseless violence terminology in Belgian and Dutch culture", because it appears to be entirely about the sociopolitical significance of the usage of the term in those areas since 1997 rather than about the term in general. The current title is confusing and misleading in the English Wikipedia because of the long-running cultural context of the term in English-speaking regions, especially considering the way the article is currently written with apparent substantial ignorance of that English language cultural context. - Apotheon (talk) 16:48, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Hans Van Themsche & Guido Demoor

I am going to remove Hans Van Themsche and Guido Demoor from the list.

• Hans Van Themsche, because there was a clear motivation behind his acts, making it not pointless.
• Guido Demoor, because as known today, Demoor didn't die as a result of violence (he had 2 bruises, from 2 kicks that weren't lethal), but because of his bad condition.

--LucVerhelst 16:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I would agree, but shouldn't we consider public opinion? Everyone still categorizes these incidents as Pointless Violence, and besides even the mp3-murder had a motivation (theft). On a sidenote: shouldn't there be something about how certain journalists (one in humo, de standaard and i think de morgen; will have to look for their names) don't think these incidents are news-worthy? I know it's certainly been a topic of heavy discussion in my university(UGent) --Maraud 13:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think public opinion is relevant for Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is about (verifiable) facts, while public opinion more often than not is about beliefs.

Newsworthyness is another problem. An article is fit for Wikipedia if its subject is "notable". I'm not sure both have the same meaning. But since the incidents have had so much news coverage, I would say that they are notable enough to get their article on Wikipedia : there'll always be people that are going to look for indepth information on them.

Which brings us to the value of the information in the articles in question.

About the Van Holsbeeck-murder having a motivation : I have considered this too. You could argue however that the violence used (resulting in murder) is so disproportionate towards the motivation (theft of an iPod), that it could be considered "pointless violence".--LucVerhelst 14:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Pointless violence as such does not exist. (One can argue that all violence is pointless - or that all violence has some sort of reason (even if it is incomprehensible for most of us) - dependent of the point of view). The term is used in the media in Belgium and the Netherlands, but not clearly defined. Therefore it is important what the media calls pointless violence, not what we think it is (which would constitute OR). I'll put the cases back. Sijo Ripa 19:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. I did some editing, and changed the heading to reflect your arguments. Is that OK with you ? --LucVerhelst 20:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Good job, Luc. Sijo Ripa 20:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Nathalie Mahy and Stacy Lemmens

I think this case can't be really considered as a case of just pointless violence. I agree that it is pointless violence in some way, but it was more than pointless violence only. The murder of Nathalie and Stacy surely was pointless (but which murder isn't pointless?), but they weren't killed only because of an (unexpected or sudden) aggression. But if we do consider the case of Ait-Oud as a case of pointless violence, we should for example also consider the case of Marc Dutroux as pointless violence. Karma-AH 21:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Move

I have changed the article's name to Senseless Violence, since this seems to be the most used term in English media to describe similar events. Belection06 (talk) 10:15, 16 December 2007 (UTC)