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Latest comment: 24 days ago11 comments4 people in discussion
The shooting only appears to have been discovered in Forest Park and the actual attack seems to have occurred in Oak Park instead. Subsequently, the name of the article is now problematic because the shooting appears to not have occurred in Forest Park and therefore it is inappropriate to keep it as the name.
@Raskuly: I was somewhat puzzled by these comments until I realized this article was originally named 2024 Forest Park shooting before you moved it to 2024 CTA Blue Line shooting. Subsequently, in an undiscussed move, the article was renamed as 2024 CTA shooting, with the comment: "This is not currently ambiguous with any other shooting in the CTA system in 2024." Which, I think, misunderstands the various criteria for naming an article. The naming conventions for events suggests including "When", "Where" and "What" in an article title. The Manual of Style section on abbreviations also offers advice about having abbreviations in article titles, suggesting an abbreviation should be spelt out in full to avoid confusion for those not familiar with the term. Looking at the news media sources for this article, I note that most are Chicago based, so using the abbreviation "CTA" and the name "Blue Line" in their headlines is understandable, as their readers are probably familiar with these terms, too. Although the Chicago media might have settled on using the name "CTA Blue Line shooting", this is not the case for news media elsewhere. "Chicago train shooting" appears to be a common term used by the news media outside of Chicago, perhaps with "metro" or "area" as well.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] What is more confusing is that the abbreviation "CTA" is, itself ambiguous when it comes to public transport, too, as it could be referring to the Cairo Transportation Authority! I think the move to the current title was an attempt to solve a problem that never existed, but it has resulted in a rather vague title using an ambiguous abbreviation that is no longer a commonly recognizable name for readers that is used by many sources. I think this article should be called "2024 Chicago train shooting." Thoughts? - Cameron Dewe (talk) 06:35, 14 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
We cannot have something as vague as CTA in the article name. Did the shooting occur in the Cairo Transportation Authority? Central Texas Airport? Crystal Thai Airlines? We must have a reference to Chicago (or a suburb) in the title. WWGB (talk) 11:16, 14 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'd be in favor of a move like that. I moved it to 2024 CTA Blue Line shooting because the title was now simply wrong and it was meant to be a placeholder, hence why I made the post here. Raskuly (talk) 23:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Cameron Dewe, to your point that the title 2024 CTA shooting "misunderstands the various criteria for naming an article", I disagree. When I moved the page, it was at 2024 CTA Blue Line shooting. Since there was no other CTA shooting in 2024 with an article, this violated WP:OVERPRECISION (which is part of Wikipedia naming policy). So it was not, in fact, "solving a problem that never existed". I wasn't thinking that CTA may be ambiguous with anything else though, so I stand corrected on that matter.
The current article title may technically be incorrect though. Currently we don't know if it happened in Chicago city limits, so a more appropriate title may be "2024 Chicago "L" shooting" (to follow the naming of the Chicago "L" article) or "2024 Chicagoland train shooting" (to clarify that the incident happened and was discovered in the Chicagoland area, not just in city limits). Epicgenius (talk) 17:39, 24 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Epicgenius: One of the WP:CRITERIA for naming an article is Recognizability. Also, Wikipedia articles use commonly recognizable names in their article titles, not official names. When I went searching for news media articles about this event, I found that while those sources based in Chicago used the abbreviation CTA in their news articles, US sources based outside Chicago, and international sources, used "Chicago" when describing where this shooting happened. I also note that the shooting happened on a Chicago Transit Authority train. If the organization that runs the train can ignore the city limits when naming itself, then so can Wikipedia when concisely naming an article. If 2024 CTA Blue Line shooting was too WP:PRECISE then 2024 CTA shooting what not WP:PRECISE enough. The general reader, and most reporters, probably have no idea exactly where the Chicago city limits are. However, the CTA's Blue Line does operate in the Chicago metropolitan area and passes through down-town Chicago. Since this crime happened on a vehicle in transit, pinning down where it happened is going to be a problem. Nevertheless, the shooting still happened on a Chicago train, which is the best description of "where" that I could come up with. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 18:41, 24 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Cameron Dewe, fair enough, thanks for explaining. I still think the current article title might be imprecise (and indeed, that is why I suggested "Chicagoland", the WP:COMMONNAME for the Chicago metropolitan area, or "Chicago L", the name of the system). My objection wasn't to the name of the Chicago Transit Authority—I don't particularly care whether the authority operates outside city limits—but to the fact that the current article title refers to the city, not the agency.
However, if reliable sources from outside Chicagoland commonly refer to the incident as happening in Chicago despite the fact that the bodies were found outside city limits, I won't object. Epicgenius (talk) 19:02, 24 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
