[WikiEN-l] murder versus kill

[Delirium]

Harry Smith wrote:

>My question is do we use the term murder for this
>shooting or do we change the wikipedia article on
>murder?
>
>seems to be a question of wikipedia using its own
>definitions for words at wikipedia.
>
>is this type of internal consistency valuable?
>
>if it is not should we make that known?
>
>is using the term murder according to the wikipedia
>definition POV?
>  
>
The problem isn't with the definition, but with applying it.  We can 
very well discuss what "murder" means, and what it is defined as in 
various places and at various times in history, and so on, but when we 
start saying "this particular killing was a murder", that quickly 
becomes problematic.

More than that, there's just no good reason to do it, and it sometimes 
even sounds bad.  If we give the relevant facts, people can make their 
own judgments as to whether a particular killing was in fact murder.  
There's no good reason to describe John F. Kennedy as being "murdered", 
for example.  Even in cases where nearly everyone agrees the killing was 
wholly unjustified, like with the Holocaust, it sounds odd when you use 
the term "murdered", as some of our articles currently do---it sounds 
like you're going out of your way to say "this is what happened AND PS 
IT WAS BAD!" rather than just reporting the facts.  I can't think of 
many uses of the word "murder" apart from "[person] was convicted of 
murder" that don't sound like that, actually.

-Mark