Talk:Killing

Change of redirect

I have changed the redirect from Murder to Homicide on the grounds the redirecting the word "killing" to the Murder article is a violation of WP:NPOV, due to the fact that not all acts of killing are considered murder in the eyes of the law, and as the Homicide article indicates not all cases of homicide are considered illegal (i.e. warfare, self-defense, etc). By rights "Killing" probably deserves its own general article as the word is not exclusive to a human acting against another human, as killing also occurs human to animal, animal to animal, animal to human, and even plant to human/human to plant. But I'll let someone else work out those semantics. 68.146.81.123 (talk) 02:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree. I propose a move of this disambig page.Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:24, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Killing → Killing (disambiguation)Killing (disambiguation) — Killing should redirect to causing death, as it is the primary topic. Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:24, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Causing death is the primary topic. See also: Talk:Kill. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose; see Talk:Kill (you should have combined these requests). Powers ^T 13:43, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per LtPowers. The proposed target is little more than a dictionary definition. older ≠ wiser 13:54, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Over-reliance on list of types of killing

List of types of killing is weirdly clinical, mixed with more ghastly categories. It doesn't function well as a course disambiguation page.

Thus I added a new section: scale and intensity of killing, which provides most of the first-order entry points, graduated to some extent by degree. It's far from complete (so it doesn't excessively overlap the sprawling list). You don't need manslaughter, because murder gets you there. It does try to cover the major contexts, scales, flavours, and moral distinctions.

In my view, anyone who regards list of types of killing as suited to purpose as a disambiguation nexus of first resort has not understood a single word of George Orwell, on either language or state. — MaxEnt 20:39, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Section name changed to Scope and moral character of killing. [edit: was briefly "Scale"] I knew intensity was wrong, but it took a moment. — MaxEnt 20:42, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Abortion

Just a quick note, since Abortion has sporadically been appearing and disappearing on this list. And was removed in this recent edit (which I think is fine).

Two things. 1) If it appears in this article it needs context, like who or under what circumstances people view it as killing. 2) This isn't an exhaustive list of "types of killing". It's a disambiguation page. For instance, one day you might wonder about people killing people and type in "Killing" and arrive at this page and then you're like "oh I meant it like Murder" and you click on Murder and are happy. Would even the most pro-life person do something like that? Type in "Killing" with the intention of arriving at Abortion? Maybe not. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)^[ᴛ] 20:02, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

The current wording on abortion is a bit confusing. Abortion is killing if one perceives it to be? Or if one perceives the embryo or fetus to be a human being etc.? Whether we perceive the fetus to be a moral worthy agent is irrelevant. Terminating the fetus is still killing the fetus. For example, I don't perceive an insect to be of much moral consideration or much of a spiritual entity but I'd still know if I killed the insect. Propose to just state plainly something along the lines of: abortion refers to a medical procedure intended to kill the embryo / fetus and remove the same from the womb. 2A02:8084:4262:D500:113A:E16B:91F8:C6A8 (talk) 10:30, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

In addition to being confusing, it was completely unnecessary. No disambiguation purpose is served by inclusion. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:39, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Agree that it could be removed altogether. I think the types of killing tab should be simplified and rely on linking to elsewhere. As it stands we now just have a very ad hoc list of just homicide, murder and assisted dying. I think we could just include a definition of killing and then link to other related articles - homocide, murder, manslaughter, assisted dying, abortion, suicide, animal slaughter, war, self defence etc. What do you think? 2A02:8084:4262:D500:113A:E16B:91F8:C6A8 (talk) 14:32, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Homicide is the most straightforward source of possible confusion, so I'd support keeping that one. Just a link to the list suffices for the rest. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:36, 1 July 2025 (UTC)