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The beginning of the page says During the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, actor Will Smith walked onstage and assaulted comedian Chris Rock by slapping him across the face during Rock's presentation of Best Documentary Feature.
Should this be changed to "allegedly assaulted"? After all, assault is a crime, and there has been no conviction. I know that it's very obvious that he did it because it was on camera, but are we supposed to have an "allegedly" in this case? Di (they-them) (talk) 00:11, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so - the sources generally just describe it as assault, right? Obviously everyone saw it happen; there is I guess some room to wrangle over the legal definition of assault, but if there's no disagreement among the sources then we can reflect this. While WP:BLP urges caution about these sorts of things when no criminal conviction has been obtained, situations like this are why it says only to seriously consider not describing it as fact, rather than forbidding it - the standard to just say "assault" in the article voice without a conviction is high, but I think it's met here. (If you disagree the thing to do would be to look for sources expressing doubt about whether it was actually assault.) Also, if the sources don't usually use the word "assault", my suggestion would be to just use a different word rather than add "alleged" - "alleged assault" seems weird because it makes it sound like whether the event took place is in doubt, which isn't true. We can just say that the type was "facial slapping" or even just "slap" in the infobox or something, if necessary. --Aquillion (talk) 12:43, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
