User:Crispmuncher/ITN Deaths

This essay documents my (User:Crispmuncher) thoughts regarding the death criteria for notable individuals on ITN, specifically with reference to the notability requirements. Although this is not intended as a suggestion of any kind of policy or guideline I reserve the right to reference the conclusions drawn here in support of a position adopted at WP:ITN/C as part explanation of my rationale. This is essentially a mental exercise in estimating roughly how notable someone needs to be in order to merit inclusion in a manner that is more objective and impartial than a simple knee-jerk reaction based on one's feelings towards the individual candidate.

How many people fit the bill?

The first and key factor for determining notability is how many deaths should be posted to ITN: everything else is scaled according to this metric. This is a subjective metric based more on judgement and opinion than anything else but I have selected a figure of two postings a month. The rationale here is that ITN should not become an obituaries column: there should rarely be more than one death listed on the template at any given time and if there are no deaths featured at any one point that is not in itself a problem. Even at this figure I would expect there to be a death present for at least one third of the time on average.

From this single metric we can extrapolate an estimate of how many people there are alive that merit being featured on ITN. If we assume than the average person lives to the age of 75 years, or 900 months, posting at a rate of two per month would imply that there are 1800 people alive today who will qualify for ITN inclusion at the time of their deaths.

1800 people sounds like a lot, but bear in mind the premise that figure is based on - they need only be alive today and notable at the time of their deaths: it includes babes in arms who today are completely non-notable and have yet to say their first word, but nevertheless will go on to achieve great things before their deaths. It probably includes one or two individuals of retirement age, who are currently non-notable but whose achievements in later life will still cause them to cross the notability threshold and prove worthy of posting.

How do we model this? I have elected to choose a simple model and say that on average people become notable half way through their lifetime. Obviously, some people will become notable well before this point and others after it, but on average it seems to be as good enough figure to work on as any other. If we halve that set of 1800 people we arrive at a figure of 900 people who are currently notable and worthy of being featured.

Who are these people?

Nine hundred people may seem like a lot, indeed it is too many to enumerate in advance. Previous attempts to do just this such as WP:LILP have failed. Rather than doing so again, here I attempt to break down those 900 individuals by category: the death criteria do not favour any field over any other therefore these people must come from the whole scope of human endeavour. Historically death nominations have tended to come from two main categories - mass entertainment (film, TV and popular music) and political figures. In view of the media coverage these individuals tend to accrue on death they should be given prominence, but not to the exclusion of all other disciplines. Similarly, it is true that we are the English language Wikipedia and therefore it is perhaps fair to give western subjects generally and anglophone subjects in particular greater prominence, but this must not be to the exclusion of all else. Once these two factors are borne in mind 900 people no longer sounds like a lot: when spread across every conceivable discipline and the whole world there are surprisingly few people in any given category.

Breaking the 900 up into categories and assigning relative weights to each (determining how many people are in each category) is inevitably a matter of judgement. After some thought I have decided to select the following as my basis for analysis. I will admit that this is not perfect but it will at least serve as a rough guide:

Politics

Includes: Heads of state, leaders of countries that are not head of state, other elected representatives, military officers, campaigners.
Weight given: 24%, equating to 216 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 5.8 posts per year.

216 people is not very many here. Assuming 'major' countries have more than one sufficiently notable person for posting that implies that even serving heads of state of minor countries do not qualify.

TV and film

Includes: Screen actors and actresses, other on screen entertainers and personalities, directors and producers, writers, technical roles.
Weight given: 20%, equating to 180 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 4.8 posts per year.

180 sounds reasonably generous here, but remember that this is across the whole spectrum geographically and in terms of discipline. Even allowing a healthy western or anglophone bias as discussed above perhaps 50% of these individuals will be from other regions. When off-screen talent is also considered we are probably down to around one third of the total or 60 living individuals being western on-screen stars. With this in mind a simple formulaic reason for posting (such as "won an Oscar") is not by and of itself reason to post since more than 60 people have them.

This category is given more prominence than popular music because film and television are arguably separate fields, especially when the full gamut of TV personalities are considered, but they are grouped together here as one because of the considerable overlap between the two.

Popular music

Includes: Artists, music executives, DJ's, commentators, technical roles.
Weight given: 14%, equating to 126 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 3.4 posts per year.

A similar situation to that with film and television applies here with respect to geographical scope and different disciplines. Using the same one-third ratio a western pop star would need to be among the top 42 individuals to be worth posting.

Sports

Includes: Sports mean and women, team managers, other non-playing individuals appropriate to the sport, commentators.
Weight given: 9%, equating to 81 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 2.2 posts per year.

Again, the full range of possible disciplines needs to be considered. In addition to actual sports talent there are mangers, commenators and other personalities, for example, technical design staff in motorsport.

Arts

Includes: Music other than popular music, theatre, literature, painting, sculpture, fashion design, creative industries such as advertising
Weight given: 9%, equating to 81 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 2.2 posts per year.

Awards such as the Nobel Prize for literature, Tonys etc are not by and of themselves evidence that someone meets the threshold.

Health, science, engineering & technology

Includes: Pure science, engineering, inventors, architecture, computing.
Weight given: 9%, equating to 81 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 2.2 posts per year.

This is a big category but there are in many cases grey areas between the subcategories making it up, so I combine them into one. This is a category that has been if anything under-represented on ITN historically.

Business

Includes: Executives, entrepreneurs, bankers, financial traders, economists.
Weight given: 5%, equating to 45 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 1.2 posts per year.

Social sciences

Weight given: 5%, equating to 45 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 1.2 posts per year.

Religion

Weight given: 5%, equating to 45 currently notable individuals, and we can expect 1.2 posts per year.

What about this factor you didn't consider?

This is only an aid to consideration of the intrinsic notability of a candidate. Of course, other factors play a role. If the article is not in shape we can't post but I do not think that is such a big problem as is often imagined: if an individual is genuinely notable they will generally have a well-developed article. If they don't that could suggest the subject is not as notable as it may appear.

Nor does it cover deaths that are themselves notable: an otherwise non-notable individual may be worth posting if it is at the centre of some controversy. This essay does not attempt to cover deaths of non-notable individuals as part of notable events - for example accidents, atrocities or natural disasters. In such cases the focus of ITN is generally on the incident itself as opposed to the deaths per se.