Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of deaths due to COVID-19 (2nd nomination)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Consensus is the article needs editing and splitting out, not deletion. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:00, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of deaths due to COVID-19

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List of deaths due to COVID-19 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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This is going to be a weird one so please stay with me. This list as it currently stands is 299,997 bytes and has no citations because there are more entries than the per page template limit of MediaWiki. The consensus on this article's talk page has repeatedly been in favor of not splitting it due to the sort functions. We are in a bind because it is impossible to verify the information, violating BLP, which covers recent deaths, while leaving it in its current state.

Further, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States in 2020. There is a good reason that List of deaths due to Heart Disease, List of deaths due to Stroke, and List of deaths due to Lung Cancer are all red links. The lists that they create would be too broad to be encyclopedic and are better suited for a database. I think that this list has crossed over from being a unique collection of information that is useful in an encyclopedia to a tragically common cause of death. Lugnuts said something to this effect in their deletion statement just over a year ago and it has only gotten worse.

The article does not show that this list is notable as a stand alone list. Doing some BEFORE I noticed that there is quite a bit of discussion of the number of deaths and trying to calculate the excess mortality over the past 2 years, but very little attempt to exhaustively list the people who have died of COVID-19. There are some listicles of 20 or so celebs that died but no in depth discussion of the phenomenon or anything as wide reaching as this. Maybe in a few years when the history of the pandemic is being written we can return to this subject, but right not, no.

I think the article should be deleted and replaced with a category. -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 13:39, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 15:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of COVID-19-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 15:39, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and Split (by year) per WP:PAPER. No need to resort to the delete option, leaving us only with a category, which is not sortable or easy to navigate. Havradim (talk) 15:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Strictly speaking, we don't need citations here, because only blue-linked individuals are included, and their articles should already include the citations for cause of death. Sometimes, footnotes are clutter; for example, List of people by Erdős number gets by just fine without them, because any given item is supported by the contents of the linked biography page and/or a check with a standard database. I'm also not convinced that splitting by year would be such a great detriment to sortability in practice. XOR'easter (talk) 17:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I would argue that article's approach is problematic and does not follow policy -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 22:43, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    But what policy is actually being violated? Verification requiring one extra mouse click is not the same as information being unverifiable. And I don't think that the comparison to heart disease, stroke, or lung cancer is actually illustrative. None of those originated in 2019. XOR'easter (talk) 04:58, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think the better reason would be List of deaths due to heart disease, List of death due to stroke, and List of deaths due to lung cancer as red links provided the MOS formatting. Just providing some clarity. – The Grid (talk) 20:01, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep As I pointed out last year when it was nominated for the third time, reliable sources cover this, and everyone on the list is a blue link to their own article. Category:Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic exist. We can divide the list into nations or continents if need be. As for the examples List of deaths from coronary thrombosis exists. Category:Deaths from lung cancer but isn't made into a list because it has 2,276 entries. We do have various lists for types of death found at Lists of people by cause of death. Dream Focus 22:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would not rely on an OTHERSTUFF argument here; List of deaths from coronary thrombosis should potentially be AFD-ed depending on what is said here. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 00:25, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      I did not make the argument that other stuff exist. I was responding to the nominator mentioning these articles that they claim didn't exist and what they claimed was the reason why. Dream Focus 00:42, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per reasons listed by User:Dream Focus above, or Split (by year) per reasons listed by User:Havradim above. Paintspot Infez (talk) 02:36, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Agreed with comments above that the lack of inline citations isn't a problem here as all entries are blue-linked. I disagree with the nominator's comparison to lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Coronavirus is a (very long) event and there will hopefully become a time when nobody is dying of it. It's very unlikely we will eradicate all deaths by stroke for example. Thus eventually there will be a finite scope for this list. NemesisAT (talk) 16:40, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep; however, in a similar vein to what User:Havradim said, it should probably be split. I would suggest going even further than what User:Havradim said, however, in that it should not only be split by year, but by month. There should be a page called "List of deaths due to COVID-19", but instead of containing deaths on that page, it should have a section header for 2020, for 2021 (and later for 2022 and beyond, as will likely be the case; my best guess is it will be around 2023 or 2024 when the pandemic really starts to peter out), and under each section header, links to pages for each month (say, COVID-19 deaths in January 2020) or for a range of months (COVID-19 deaths in January-March 2020). The list provided by this page, even if or when split in the manner just described, should be kept because it provides an excellent reference of which countries had notable persons dying at what times. As sample persons, the deaths of these notable persons can provide insight into which regions were being hit at what times, and of course, since these are notable persons in themselves, provide an understanding of the wide range of people who were affected by and died from COVID-19. AMBtheMarylander2102 (talk) 01:47, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete does not meet even the basic sourcing needs WP:LISTVERIFY - WP:MINREF ....Moxy- 04:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Did you read the last sentence in that? It is generally presumed that obviously appropriate material, such as the inclusion of Apple in the List of fruits, does not require an inline citation. You can click on any entry and verify the information that easily, the infobox showing when they died and the cause of death being covid. Dream Focus 05:17, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • You should read over WP:BDP...major bio concern considering cause of death by COVID for those that refuse vaccinations are being denied death benefits. Serious legal stuff here... we should follow the basics on sourcing. Don't make our readers run around and hunt down sources.... that would be the opposite of enabling research and ease of access.Moxy- 00:02, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment List of COVID-19 deaths in South Africa should be deleted. Johnny Au (talk/contributions) 05:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Nominated for AfD: WP:Articles for deletion/List of COVID-19 deaths in South Africa. Johnny Au (talk/contributions) 02:22, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per reasons referred to by Paintspot Infez. Johnny Au (talk/contributions) 05:47, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and Split by year, for reasons given by Havradim above CC0Rider (talk) 10:36, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and split by year, per Havradim and CC0Rider -- The Anome (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The splitting proposal is being discussed at Talk:List of deaths due to COVID-19#Split by year?. – Uanfala (talk) 22:08, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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