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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mason (talk | contribs) at 13:05, 21 November 2020 (→‎List of deaths due to COVID-19). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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)
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Following this RfC about splitting the list, several editors also made the suggestion of deletion. To quote some (but not all) of the rationales used in the RfC:

"The UK's Office for National Statistics reports, Of all death occurrences between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) compared with 13,619 deaths due to pneumonia and 394 deaths due to influenza. Nobody, I assume, is suggesting that we should be setting up List of deaths due to influenza, and yet here we are trying to maintain that a cause of death that is 122 times more common is remarkable enough to be notable and listworthy."
"death due to COVID-19 was inherently notable earlier in 2020, it is no longer, just as we do not have lists for deaths from heart disease, cancer, or the flu."
"There have been over 220,000 deaths in the United States. I'd think this is no longer as significant as it was when the disease first broke out. In other words, it is too common to be usable as a list. " Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 10:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 11:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of COVID-19-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 11:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete while I am generally against removing information from WP, it takes a huge amount of effort to maintain that list properly, and I feel that the relatively small benefits to our project of it existing and being kept up to date properly don't really justify the enormous energy expenditure by so many great editors. Dr. Vogel (talk) 12:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If the editors feel they're expending too much energy on the list, they could simply stop working on it. This is an odd reason to call for an article's deletion. MAINEiac4434 (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's because there is no valid reason, the ones who requested AfD just don't want to hear about covid apparently and thus want this article deleted. That's also why they pinged each other to obtain a delete answer. --Pesqara (talk) 23:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Have you wondered why there are only a few hundred individuals listed out of those 1,340,000, if this is a "indiscriminate" list? --Pesqara (talk) 23:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The list is large, but it is not indiscriminate. It has a specific criteria for inclusion, and it is timebound. It's unclear why the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths is relevant here - this is a list of deaths of people who have wikipedia articles, which will always be a tiny fraction of the number of total deaths. GabrielF (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. It seems that the people who follow that questionable rationale think that this is a list of people notable for dying of covid rather than a list of notable people who died of covid. --Pesqara (talk) 22:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep/Split The comparison to pneumonia or influenza is flawed. SARS COV2 is a novel disease and this pandemic will last a finite amount of time. It is also an event of great historical significance. Influenza is a type of disease caused by a family of viruses that has been with us for thousands of years. Influenza and pneumonia will always be with us - they are not discrete events. A better comparison would be the Spanish flu, which also was an event of great historical significance, as well as a novel virus and a pandemic that lasted a finite length of time. We have a list of notable fatalities for the Spanish flu. List of Spanish flu cases. Categories are not as useful - their nested structure makes it difficult to have all the information in one place. Their decentralized structure makes them difficult to maintain. They aren't sortable. GabrielF (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The list is, in principle, useful and worthwhile: I wouldn't have spent quite a bit of time on it, especially in its early days, if I did not think so, but, as I warned in March may happen, it has outgrown its usefulness. Eventually, I would suggest, whether the list survives or not is almost entirely dependent on a judgement as to how long a list can usefully be. 200 names? 500? 1000? 1500? As soon as it becomes necessary to split such a list for manageability, it loses the benefit of it being a list article rather than a category, and many editors have stated that it has reached that stage long ago. In relation to the comments about the Spanish Flu list: the number of people being listed here is approximately 900, and growing, while the deaths noted in the Spanish flu article is about one tenth of that; recentism and opinions on eligibility, factors of Wikipedia that did not exist in 1918, impinge negatively on this list; it is the determination of many editors to ensure that every person they hear about on their local news services is included here that makes this untenable and it is the incompleteness of the Spanish Flu list (arguably a weakness of it) that makes it viable as a wiki article. Kevin McE (talk) 15:08, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete — The list is huge and will only grow more unwieldy; its same purpose is much better served by just ensuring Category:Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic and the various sub-categories are kept up to date. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 16:11, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree that categories can serve as a replacement for lists. Categories are less useful to readers (can't be sorted, require you to click through multiple sub-categories to find information, etc), and are harder to maintain (you can't monitor membership by watching one article, you can't really include a citation for why a person is in a category). A tool that queried wikidata for a list of deaths and then presented results in a user-friendly format would be better, but that's not really something that exists within wikipedia as far as I know. GabrielF (talk) 16:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it does, but I don't know how to set it up. Ijon could probably make a URL that could be linked in the ==External links== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Split to much smaller sub-groups (e.g., List of people who died of COVID-19 in Italy or Earliest deaths due to COVID-19 (i.e., removing everything after approximately April), or else blank and redirect the list to the main pandemic article (and maybe page-protect that redirect). This is no longer an encyclopedic list, and we shouldn't continue maintaining this list, but there's also no need to hide the history from any editor who wants to copy a source to re-use in a different article, make sure that the content is in the linked articles, etc. (For transparency, Lugnuts left a note on my user talk page about this; I assume that he contacted everyone else who had participated in the RFC that precipitated this.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I dropped a neutral note to everyone who commented at the RfC, and left a note there to say I'd done that. Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 17:34, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And obviously, I'm rewarding your inclusiveness and transparency by voting against your AFD. 😜 WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oooooh, you'd like that, wouldn't you! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or Split The list cannot be adequately replaced by the simple category, as categories aren't sortable and are unwieldy to use. Furthermore, Wikipedia and its editors can clearly maintain lists of people that are much longer (even if we do eventually have to split them for manageability) -- for example, list of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. I can see the benefits of not listing every person who died on one page, but I don't think the list should be deleted entirely, per whatamidoing. MAINEiac4434 (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Split I know there are similar categories but this list is sortable by age, date and location. I think it could be split by country fairly easily. Every time I look at the list, I find names of people I'm surprised to see, I think the list(s) is informative and helps to destigmatize the disease. Liz Read! Talk! 21:52, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and if need be, split. The rationales outlined for deletion, and comparison to making a list of deaths due to influenza, cancer, or heart disease (comparisons which usually come from individuals with a certain agenda, but whatever...), are outright nonsensical. Covid is not a cause of death that has become common, it is a pandemic, a single historical event which in itself warrants such a list, just like the List of Spanish flu cases. It is notable and listworthy precisely because it has killed more notable people in a few months than influenza in decades. And since some people don't seem to get it, I will repeat it there: this is not a list of people who are notable for dying of covid, it's a list of notable people who died of covid. Others have already explained why a category would not be an adequate substitute. --Pesqara (talk) 22:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The pandemic remains a singular momentous event, very unlike cancer or the flu, and deaths due to it remain notable and listworthy. The number of deaths is not an indictment of their notability or listworthiness. Brycehughes (talk) 03:04, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is an extraordinarily useful list. This is a distinct event and the list will likely add few new additions at some point and then can be fine tuned 2604:2000:1382:4C50:803D:6890:C807:221F (talk) 03:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep Pesqara explained it well so I won't repeat. This is another example of what wikipedia does best and possible only because of our position as the number 1 reference source in the world. Our cumulative efforts are better than any other source. We have people power, we have the legwork available and also the legwork for constant scrutiny of such a list. Breaking it up into more geographical smaller lists should also be done, but to rely exclusively on localized lists necessarily negates its usefulness on a global scale. Yes, editing this long of an article can tax computer and server data capacity. That problem certainly does not advise destruction of the information as a solution. I suggested breaking it into more manageable chunks that could be displayed as the whole article two months ago. I got crickets. Suddenly now, this needs a radical execution? We are a living step in history. We have the technology to document what is happening. What is being proposed is to destroy that historical content, to achieve what goal? Brownie deletion points? Keeping this much of the existing information is inconvenient? Words are beyond me to describe the absurdity. Trackinfo (talk) 04:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep agree that lists and categories both serve two important purposes. Most casual readers do not use categories and the UI for them sucks (no offense intended). This list is about the moment of history we’re in and conveys the loss of notable people in an encyclopedic context. Scarpy (talk) 07:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The list is already, by definition, a list of notable people who have died of COVID-19, and therefore not indiscriminate. There is already a large number of similar lists on Wikipedia, including for common illnesses, such as tuberculosis. As with all such lists, this one does not assert that the disease is inherently notable, but that notable people dying from it is notable. Phediuk (talk) 11:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This is a useful list. The argument that it is hard to maintain is not valid. Lots of things on Wikipedia is hard to maintain and this shouldn't be harder than many other things. And with time this list will be much more manageable. Split if needed. Mason (talk) 13:05, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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