Talk:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, 2012

Listing Date

Should the date listed be the day of death or the day of incident which caused the death? (i.e. James Lamont Green was shot on August 9, 2012; but died August 10, 2012) Suprcel (talk) 19:53, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I would say definitely the date of the incident. That is how I've been doing it thus far. I think that makes the most sense as this is a list of killings. If a person shoots someone on Monday but they die on Friday, I would say they were "killed" on Monday, not on Friday. But this issue is definitely worth discussing. My stance is, place the killing in the table based on the date of incident, but list the date of death in the description. What do you think? Michellecornelison (talk) 06:54, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. That is how I added mr. Green's entry, I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page. Suprcel (talk) 15:42, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It may even be worthwhile to place an explanation of this in the introduction such as, "Killings are arranged by date of incident, which may not necessarily indicate the date of the person's death." If this seems like a good idea, we could put it in all of the lists' intros. Michellecornelison (talk) 06:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I think a line like that would be helpful to people who might be just be skimming the list looking for a date of death. (not sure about the wording, but I'm unable to think up somehting better) Suprcel (talk) 15:42, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Let me know if this is better: "Killings are arrange by date of incident which caused the individual's death. If the death occurred at a later date, that date is listed in the description, if possible." Michellecornelison (talk) 01:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

How about "Killings are arranged by date of incident which caused death. Different death dates are, if possible, noted in the description." I don't think it's necessary to explain that sometimes the death date is different.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 02:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I like this one. Suprcel (talk) 15:58, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Anyone want to plop it in the intros? Michellecornelison (talk) 03:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 04:59, 17 August 2012 (UTC) Thank you! Michellecornelison (talk) 04:47, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

List Style

There were a couple of things I wanted to discuss about style in the list. One is: thus far we have typically referenced all citations at the end of the description. I think it is best to keep it this way, even if a citation was only used to find the name. I think having a citation next to the description and next to the name is just a little confusing to look at. Any citation that is added ought to support the description anyway or the description can just be changed or replaced. But I think it would be more uniform and less confusing to keep this streamlined. Another is: when listing cities I think it is best to just choose a city rather than refer to one with a direction, even if that is how it is described in a source. If a more specific city cannot be found, then whatever city is named should be listed. That column is structured so that people can sort the list to see killings from specific cities grouped together. But if it says, for example, "South of Philadelphia" instead of Philadelphia, it won't show up next to the other Philadelphia killings. Again, if an actual specific city name can be found, that should be used. But I think that often when reporters phrase it that way it's just because an incident may have occurred outside of legal city limits (so perhaps not in that city's jurisdiction or something) but still geographically within that city. Any other thoughts on this? Michellecornelison (talk) 05:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

1) Agree, I think most of those came from me, when I started identifying the unnamed. I will move the ref's to the end of the description. Suprcel (talk) 15:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

No problem! I understood your logic, just trying to streamline things. Thanks. Michellecornelison (talk) 02:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

2) But some of these take place not close to a city, but out in the rural countryside. What if we use the county (or county equivalent) to identify the location. The problem with using just the name from the location like (north of Anchorage) is that Newspaper will use the nearest large town to describe a location, not always the nearest town/city/village. (i.e. The Abrahamson shooting took place just outside of Birchwood, AK. to get to Anchorage, you would have to drive through parts of birchwood, then all the way through Eagle River, AK and then you would get to Anchorage.) But I will change the Iowa City report, since the mobile home park where the shooting occured has an Iowa City address. Suprcel (talk) 15:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think that if it is clear from a source that the incident happened outside of the city they mention, we should try to look for other sources that will list the actual city where it happened (by actual city, I guess I mean whatever the postal address would be). For the Alaska incident you mentioned, it sounds like Birchwood should be the city listed. Listing counties will mix things up because many states have counties and cities with the same names but in different locations--I know that is definitely true where I live. I think we just need to keep it consistent and list the best city possible to describe the incident. Even if it ends up that a major city is listed for an incident that happened outside that city, it still describes the area where it happened, and if another article can be found that lists the actual city, then someone can edit it to make it more precise. Michellecornelison (talk) 02:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Using the city of the postal address is an excellent idea. I had struggled with the issue of how to describe rural incidents. I never came up with a satisfactory solution, sometimes referencing the county, sometimes relation to the nearest big city. The advantages of using the city from postal address are that 1) every location has a specific city name, 2) an authoritative source provides that information for every address and 3) the postal service uses the name of the nearest big city when an address is in a suburb. If we do agree on this practice, I could specify that in the comment header to each article that already specifies several other practices. Here's what I'm thinking:

The City location is that as specified by the US Postal Service for an address or for the nearest address.

Thoughts? --LUOF (talk) 12:45, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. It could be a good idea, but I think it might be sort of a statement of obvious. I think it is good for us as editors to agree on what we mean when we list a city, and maybe that can just stay here, and we can refer people to this discussion if there is an issue. But at this point I don't think that distinction is really necessary to a reader. It also helps that every single entry has a citation, where a reader can go if they want more specific location information. This is just my view though, of course. If we were going to make any comment in the intros about location, I feel like it could be worth specifying that the locations list where the killing occurred but may not necessarily indicate the police force involved (this is the case in many of the car chase incidents, which can often cover several counties before the person is killed). I don't think that necessarily has to go in there, though. Other thoughts? Michellecornelison (talk) 19:54, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the definition of city as defined by postal address is not appropriate in the intro. I was thinking including that specification in the hidden comments that are the top of each article. Casual readers do not see them. The comments are really most useful just as a handy reference to editors. The comments currently read as follows:

The format adopted is to list killings in reverse chronological order (most recent at top) with date in YYYY-MM-DD format.

Each entry lists date, name(s) if known, state (city), brief factual description as reported in the media and at least one reference.

The reference is either 1) a link to a standalone Wikipedia article,

2) a direct reference to a reliable source or

3) a link to another list in Wikipedia and a direct reference to a reliable source

I'm thinking of adding to that list:

The City location is that as specified by the US Postal Service for the address of the location of the death or for the nearest address to that location.

Based on current practice, I'll also add age of deceased.--LUOF (talk) 02:45, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh I see now what you meant, I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. I'm still not completely up with all the lingo around here. Placing it in the hidden comments at the top is an excellent idea. Sounds perfect. Michellecornelison (talk) 12:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Age?

I notice quite a few descriptions and sources mention the age of the individual. Should we have a column for age, add to the their name, or is that information not needed? thoughts? Suprcel (talk) 17:06, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

My general feeling is that we should have a column for something if it's a variable we'd want to be able to sort by. I don't know if age is such a variable or not, but that's how I think we should decide. What a lot of work it'd be to change all these now!— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 17:21, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

That is also why I thought about adding to their name (i.e. "Salgado, Benjamin (29)" ) This way we could slowly back fill the information, without a lot of work all at once of adding a new column to every entry. Suprcel (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with alf laylah wa laylah in that I don't feel that it's a category we would need to sort by. Personally, I usually just try to work it into the description. I'm not totally opposed to the idea of including it with the name, especially if anyone feels like it seems repetitive in the descriptions. I do think age is pertinent information that should be included when the source article mentions it. I think adding age to the name column would be a neat and simple way to do it. The only thing is that it would take a lot of edit time to get everything caught up, but if we all think it would be an improvement then I wouldn't mind helping. More thoughts? Michellecornelison (talk) 02:08, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I added the age to the name field for the 2012 list (will get to the other list when I have more time). I went though the page and added age information to the individuals that we already had the age data for. I will start working backwords to try and fill in missing age information. Suprcel (talk) 16:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I've worked back to August 5, 2012 (with the exception of 3 unnamed, unknown age) Suprcel (talk) 17:17, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Reliable sources? A joke?

Are we sure the sources are reliable? When I used ctrl+F to find the word "witness," nearly every time they're there, they disagree with the story of of heroic police defeating homicidal people. And in the cases without witnesses, the sources always say the attack is justified. So just what kind of sources are we using? Even sources supporting conspiracy theories are afraid to make such indefensible claims. (I'm ONLY talking about shootings at private areas, or some place far from a sidewalk or store, because witnesses in public areas would not be mentioned w/o disagreeing). 24.85.161.72 (talk) 21:48, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

On Wikipedia "reliable sources" is a technical term, defined here: WP:RS. I'm not sure I understand your concern, but maybe you'll find an answer there.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:50, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, search for "witness" on this page yourself. (use ctrl+F) Whenever witnesses are there, it's always "shot while running away," or "shot even though unarmed," and when they're not present, it's "after opening fire on all the officers and saying "shoot me," he was shot."

(ignore shootings in very public places) 24.85.161.72 (talk) 21:57, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

And also, using police sources for police shootings is like asking Obama to rewrite the article on Obama-Care. 24.85.161.72 (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, well, what are we supposed to do? The ones where it's not found to be justified are collected in the various lists of police brutality. These pages just keep track of all killings without regard to whether or not they're justified. It seems worth having.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 22:17, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm trying to just notify editors through the talk page that the sources need to be re-looked because they're have ridiculously odd patterns. 24.85.161.72 (talk) 22:39, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry about sounding like I want this list removed or to remove people from the list! It indeed is worth having, but with improved sources. 24.85.161.72 (talk) 22:41, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

We're doing the best we can, but feel free to help out. For the scope of the list all we really need is a statement that law enforcement officers killed someone.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 23:37, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

You are more then welcome to add better sources if you think they are needed. Can you provide more details into which of the sources are questionable? There are over 300 sources cited on this page, the majority of them are from news reports covering the incident. Some are police or DA investigations (most of these were only added as a way to identify the individual). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suprcel (talk • contribs) 14:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Suprcel. If someone sees a source that needs improving, feel free to find a better one and replace it! It's already very time consuming to keep up with a daily-changing list. And as Alf.laylah.wa.laylah said, the main purpose of this list is to have a record of names. I think having descriptions is important to make the list more readable, but as long as we can be sure that the shooting actually occurred, that is the important thing. The descriptions aren't intended to explain every perspective on the incident. The main purpose of this list is to provide names, dates, and locations, in my opinion. Because once we have provided a reader with that information, they can easily find more articles and read other accounts of the incident. I try to stay as neutral as possible, but I can assure you I have my own views on police killings (that's why I edit here almost every day) and it's not because I think these people deserved death. If you want to ctrl F something, look for "allegedly." You'll find that word in practically every entry because I know that police statements aren't automatically truth. I'm not really sure what the complaint is here. Michellecornelison (talk) 01:01, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Interesting Numbers

While looking at the list today, I wondered how my home state, Oklahoma, compared to other states. The list currently contains 288 deaths for 2012, here is a break down of how they compare for each state. Not sure if this is something that would add any value to the article, but I thought it was interesting to look at.

Rather than updating the talk page every time, and messing up people's watchlist, I decided to put the data on page in my userspace the data can be found here: User:Suprcel/ListStats

Yes, I have already done some of this myself just for my own curiosity. It's interesting to see what you can get from our numbers. I don't think it's needed in the article though, mainly because it could be misleading as our list is nowhere near complete, except for a couple of months that may be close. So it would be pretty skewed. But thanks for sharing your work! Michellecornelison (talk) 19:57, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Quarterly Split

The split into quarters looks great, LUOF, and will hopefully make the list a little easier to navigate. Thanks! Michellecornelison (talk) 03:05, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Should Off-Duty be included?

I'm thinking we should not include off-duty accounts. In most cases the fact that the individual was a police officer had nothing to do with the incidents that occurred. It would be the same if we had a list of all Chefs who have killed someone, whether in the kitchen or not. What is everyone else opinions? Suprcel (talk) 19:52, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

When the page was first launched about a year ago this was discussed and the decision was to include off-duty officers. The rationale, in part, is that 1) there is the potential for off-duty police officers to get more lenient treatment than does the general population, 2) off-duty police officers are better equiped and trained to use deadly force than is the general population and 3) most importantly, off-duty police officers (at least in many jurisdictions) are required to carry their service weapons and intervene if a violent situation arrises. That is, if an off-duty officer is at a restaurant where an armed robbery occurs and persons lives are at risk and there is a reasonable chance that the officer's actions can save lives, then the off-duty officer is required to act. The description in the article should state so if the officer is off duty. The reader can then decide whether to discount the incident because the officer was off-duty. If it is a serious concern, it would be possible to include a new column that indicates the duty status of the officer. That might be too much to do retrospectivley, but we are about to start a new quarter on 10/1. We could start that new table with a duty status column and see what the response is. --LUOF (talk) 20:37, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't think a new column is the way to go. I can understand that rationale for including them. Suprcel (talk) 14:30, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Certainly a question worth asking, but I also wholeheartedly agree that these incidents should be included. In general these killings are still considered "officer-involved shootings," and as LUOF stated, they are processed differently than ordinary homicides (whether handled fairly or not) and so they do fall into this category. I also wouldn't be surprised if the involved off-duty officer would be placed on administrative leave after such an incident, just as they would be in an on-duty shooting. Not only that, even if an officer has just finished a shift and is still in uniform and armed with his/her service weapon, it would still be considered an off-duty shooting and those incidents definitely need to be included. There was at least one of those this year. Michellecornelison (talk) 21:51, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

"Too Long"

While I think this is a great problem to have, I'm not sure of the best way to deal with it (and of course we can discuss whether or not the article actually is too long). I'm referring here to the "too long" tag added by Koavf on 11/12/12. It seems to me that having more than one article for a single year would be inappropriate and possibly confusing, but maybe I'm just being stubborn. Obviously we don't want to cut any content ("condense"). Another thought--about one-fourth of the length (when scrolling) is just the references alone. Is there any way to condense those? Perhaps we could edit all of the references to only include the url and title to take up less space, although I don't know if that would really improve the article. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? -Michellecornelison (talk) 05:05, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

It is long and takes quite a while to update after an edit. Currently there are about 500 entries. If it were complete, it would be significantly longer (based on extrapolations discussed previously, probably 1200 to 1600 entries). It would be a lot of work to condense the references and would not save much space. One option would be to subdivide the year 2012 into regions. The Census Bureau divides the country into four regions: Northeast, Midwest, South and West.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_States#Census_Bureau-designated_areas

--LUOF (talk) 21:45, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

That is an interesting idea, but as this is the only year that really needs splitting, it could be confusing for someone wanting to browse all the lists, not to mention making editing much more complicated. With everything already chronological, it seems most reasonable to do a split along those lines, either monthly or quarterly, though I don't really prefer that either. Do you know of any other long list articles like this one that are listed chronologically? I just don't like the idea of having so many subarticles.

Here is one other option, which is a little out there, but here it is: are the descriptions actually necessary? If the purpose is a list of names, maybe that is all we need. I'm just trying to be practical about the scope and usefulness of this list, especially as it becomes more complete. I know some of the descriptions have gotten longer lately, but limiting it to just a few words would give so little information that it wouldn't be useful. But basically I'm suggesting converting our list into just a simple list of names, dates, locations, with links to news sources. For me as a reader, one single article showing all the names of people killed in a year would be better than four or twelve articles for that year with descriptions of hundreds of incidents. It was practical when we had fewer entries, but maybe it isn't anymore. I feel crazy suggesting this as many of those hundreds of descriptions were written by me, but I think the most important thing is to find the best way to present this data in a reader-friendly way. Perhaps we could have column to say things like "ruled justifiable June 2012" or "officer charged with manslaughter August 2012" but not a description of how it happened. Thoughts? Michellecornelison (talk) 05:19, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

On further thought, I agree that a regional sub-division would not be the best solution. It would be quite a lot of work (probably several hours) to break 2012 into regions. Plus, it wouldn't make sense to break 2013 into regions, until there were many entries, which would again result in a lot of work when the article grew to that point.

I strongly favor retaining the descriptions. From those brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) descriptions it is usually fairly clear whether a killing was justified, or whether the person killed was mentally unstable, or whether excessive force was used. To me, it is very important for readers to be able to determine the general situation without having to read each original source. Because those determinations are only rarely published, we would not be able to code them into the list. A summary of the incident is the best was to convey that information.

The simplest way to address the size issue would be to break the article into quarters. Those new quarter articles could then be broken into single tables for each month. That would speed up the loading times.

User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah and I had discussed the issue previously, but decided to postpone a decision until the list grew to be too long. I'll invite him/her into this conversation.

--LUOF (talk) 23:38, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I like having the descriptions there too, so I understand. Do you know of any other chronological lists like this that have gotten this long and are divided into articles for only part of a year? Maybe we could get some other ideas. I don't know why I feel so uneasy about the quarter thing, I guess I just feel like it's weird to have so many subarticles that are so different--we'll have one for everything before 2009, several for individual years, then four articles that are only part of a year--it just feels messy to me, but maybe that's okay. Would we keep a main 2012 article, with links to the quarterly articles, or just only have those 4? Michellecornelison (talk) 06:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I just now found this page: Special:LongPages. This article is 47the in the list at 282kb. The longest is about twice that length at 556kb. I scanned through the titles of the largest 500 articles (500th at 190kb is not much shorter than this article). I did not see any that divided into quarters. There are a few that divided into months (eg, “month year in sports”). Many are lists per political entity (country, state, etc). I didn't see any per US region (northeast, midwest, south, west). Considering that this article is in good company regarding size, I am inclined to wait for User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah to weigh in.--LUOF (talk) 13:28, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Michellecornelison (talk) 15:59, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

With today's edits the article is now ranked 31st at 292kb. It could easily be #2 by the end of the year. I saw that User talk:Koavf, who flagged the toolong tag, responded to your questions with the suggestion of dividing into months. That would probably be the most standard way to subdivide. One option could be a primary 2012 article that includes a table of links to the monthly articles, with a incident count per month. The counts would need to be manually maintained, but it would not be overly difficult and it would not be tragic if the count was not always up to date. That is the sort of simple edit that many editors will do on their own. Us heavy contributors many not need to update the counts very often.--LUOF (talk) 04:24, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I think that sounds reasonable. It would be good to keep the main 2012 article with the links for each month. Then the "main" main article can just have a link for 2012 along with the other years, rather than listing links for each month on that page, if that makes sense. I also like the idea of manually keeping a running count for each month. If you can create some pages for this I'd be happy to help move or reword anything that needs to be done. This seems like the best solution to me. Michellecornelison (talk) 06:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I have never split an article so I spent the last 20 minutes reading through the guidelines to do so. I'm pretty sure I can split the article correctly. Because the article is already sorted chronologically and that is how it's going to be split, I think it will be very straight forward to just cut off the bottom month's worth of entries and paste them into the new sub-article. To do that 11 times and edit the remaining main page, I estimate will require one uninterrupted hour. It wouldn't be good to start the process without finishing it in one sitting. I can probably do that later today.--LUOF (talk) 13:37, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Whew, that's done. My one-hour estimate was optimistic. I spent 2.5 hours on the splits. I'm glad we went with the simple splits into months. Splitting by region would have taken several times that amount.--LUOF (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, you did an awesome job. I edited the subarticle intros to say which month is listed, instead of just the year. I was also thinking, it might make more sense to remove the "400" statistic sentence out of the subarticle intros, since they are only talking about one month. Especially for months like July, which have well over one-twelfth of 400 entries, the sentence doesn't really make sense. If it's OK, I will remove these soon. One other thought, that hopefully User:Alf.laylah.wa.laylah could help us with unless you know how, is that it would be great to be able to navigate between the months without having to go back to the 2012 page. Maybe we could make a horizontal box with links to each month that could go above the main table, or something like that. I think it would be great to have, but I'm not sure how to do it. Michellecornelison (talk) 05:59, 19 November 2012 (UTC) Also, I just added a hidden comment next to the count for each month so that we can record the date the count was updated. I thought that might be helpful when editing, and we can just update the date when we change it. Let me know if you think there is a better way to do this or if it seems unnecessary. Michellecornelison (talk) 06:15, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

--Jax 0677 (talk) 02:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Navigating Between Months

I just saw that User:Jax 0677 copied the month table onto each month page to help with navigation. While this is a good start, I definitely don't think we can keep it this way, because it means that to update one month's count, you'll have to update 13 different tables. But perhaps we can make it into a template, and then just update the template? Or simply have a table without counts for navigation. Thoughts? Michellecornelison (talk) 17:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment - I like the former idea better, but the latter idea could also work. I would like to see the latter table be 3X4 or 4X3. Thoughts?--Jax 0677 (talk) 18:30, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I discovered, then configured, a Navbox. I posted it to just November for now. If it satisfies the other editors, we can copy it to all the pages for 2012. --LUOF (talk) 02:37, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment - Good work. I recommend creating an article entitled Template:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States 2012 with that navbox inside to reduce repitition.--Jax 0677 (talk) 02:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of a template. I'm inclined to put the entire header into a template for all the months of 2012. I'll work on that later today and post it to Nov to see what the other editors think of it.--LUOF (talk) 13:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this everyone. I also like the idea of a template for the whole header--and including the counts in the template might be nice. Then when we want to update the counts we can just do it from the template. Michellecornelison (talk) 23:40, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I just replaced the header text with a template that includes that same info. That was easier than I had expected. I generalized the first line by omitting the reference to a specific time period. If template is acceptable, it can be used at the top of all 2012 sub-pages.--LUOF (talk) 01:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Now I'm thinking that the Navbox should be in its own template (as per User:Jax 0677's suggestion previously). I moved it back out of the header template. That would allow the same header to be used across all years. Each year will need it's own Navbox...unless we devise a single Navbox across all years, that includes months for the most recent years. In that case the Navbox could move back inside the header template. I'll think about that.--LUOF (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it all looks good as it is now. If we get to a point where another year needs to be split up we can worry about it then. But I think we are good for now. Michellecornelison (talk) 07:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed the navbox is only on November right now--I'm going to go ahead and copy it to all of the other months, hope that's alright. I think having the header as a template could be helpful, but we don't edit it that often and it might be nice to be able to word it slightly differently for different articles. Especially as it is the first thing you read, it makes sense for it to be somewhat specific to the article. Also, the headers for a year article ought to include the 400-per-year statistic figure, but the monthly articles do not need to include that. I just think it might not be necessary to make it into a template. But currently the template is only in the November article, and we can keep it that way until we decide for certain how to do it.Michellecornelison (talk) 08:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I modified the 2012 Navbox to include prior years and made it into a template. That made the original Navbox from the upper-right redundant. I placed the new version just in Oct and Nov 2012 for now. If it is acceptable, I think it could be used on all list for all years and all months. For Nov, I converted the template back into text so we don't have too many different versions in place at once. --LUOF (talk) 15:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know...I think it may have been better as it was before. I don't think you need to be able to navigate to every month of 2012 from every other yearly article. I liked only having the links to the months from the 2012 month articles. I'm just thinking of the future when other years have monthly articles, and it just seems like that header would get bulky or awkward. I just think it's a little confusing to look at, but maybe it's just because of the way "2012" is way over to the left side on the template...I know that it was getting awkward before too though having two tables up there. So I'm glad we're trying to figure our better ways to organize it. The other thing about that navbox is it makes the 2012 article kind of unnecessary, but I liked having it there because of the chart with counts. But now there is no reason for a reader to go there (and they wouldn't know that chart was there without going there first). These are just some thoughts. Michellecornelison (talk) 15:01, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay I have an idea/possible solution. What if we made another template to use for the other years that does not include the 2012 months, but looks similar to the navbox you just made? (I wasn't crazy about the vertical one we have now anyway.) Then when they click 2012 it would take them to the page with the count table, but the navbox would now include the 2012 months (as though it expanded). The count table wouldn't even need to have links anymore, it could just be plain text. What do you think? Michellecornelison (talk) 15:09, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I liked your suggestion and implemented it.--LUOF (talk) 14:06, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. You did a great job! I need to learn more about how to do all that--I appreciate you working on it. Michellecornelison (talk) 16:10, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Would there be any objection if I were to make a single template that could be used on all the pages? To meet the desire not to have to see all the months of 2012 (and future years, I assume), I'm thinking of making the months row for a year collapsed by default as a subtemplate. Also, I'd like to restore the edit link on the template to make it easier to find and update. If what I'm talking about isn't clear, I can make an example.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Your suggestion sounds good to me.--LUOF (talk) 01:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Killings occurring outside the US

I've begun a discussion on this on Talk:List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, July 2012 regarding an entry on that article. Any other input would be appreciated! We can discuss it here or there, whichever seems more appropriate. Michellecornelison (talk) 22:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)