Talk:List of unusual deaths/Archive 10

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 5 ← Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 → Archive 15

list items - contesting many of the entries

see below for revised statmement Many of these items fail WP:NPOV by giving WP:UNDUE weight to the fact that a single reporter happened to use the word "unusual" when writing about the subject. There is no evidence that the majority of reporters have expertise in identifying "unusual circumstances of death recorded throughout history" or that their use of the word was to place the death in such a context. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

when you get WP:SOOBVIOUS to replace WP:V and WP:OR and WP:NPOV you can come back in insert anything you find obvious. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:07, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I just read up the details of those other two cases and they are clearly quite unusual too. The case of the Collyer brothers is extremely bizarre and people have made movies and written books about them. All we need in that case is a blue link to our article. Insisting on more than this just seems to be being difficult as a form of disruption - see WP:STONEWALL. Warden (talk) 23:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • i somewhere missed the policy that said all blue links are unusual deaths. insisting on an actual source that calls these specific the deaths are unusual is applying WP:OR and WP:BURDEN two standard policies that apply to all content. If you dont like Wikipedia policies, you can go try to change them or edit on someplace that does not have content policies, but to keep attempting to insist that the policies dont apply to this article is the real WP:TE going on here .— Preceding unsigned comment added by TheRedPenOfDoom (talk • contribs)
  • No, Colonel, insisting that there be reliable sources that directly support including material in the list is far from disruptive editing. Applying your personal opinion as to whether or not a death is unusual is a WP:OR violation and cannot be countenanced. Once the material has been challenged, then WP:V's mandate that inline citations must be used applies. I share your concern that applying policy correctly to the article will result in it being emptied: that's why I supported deleting it as a more efficient use of our time.—Kww(talk) 15:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
  • You start a topic about cases where a single reporter happened to use the word "unusual" , and then you give examples which don't have the word unusual in them. Unrelated things here. Also you were the one who kept insisting the word "unusual" had to be in the referenced reliable source to count. Dream Focus 23:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
so just for you: NOT ONLY do many of these items fail WP:NPOV by giving WP:UNDUE weight to the fact that a single reporter happened to use the word "unusual" when writing about the subject where there is no evidence that the majority of reporters have expertise in identifying "unusual circumstances of death recorded throughout history" or that their use of the word was to place the death in such a context, a helleva lot of them do not even have sources that call them "unusual" or anything close to a reliable source. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Partial support. I agree 2 or more independent sources should be required for everyday news sources. This has also the benefit of avoiding proliferation, decreasing the likelihood WP:NOTDIR concerns. A single book or academic source is enough instead IMHO. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support a two source requirement: there are too many sources like http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/segway-company-owner-james-jimi-heselden-dies-england-riding-segway-cliff-article-1.441435 that use "freak accident" as a piece of creative writing: there's nothing about driving a vehicle over a cliff that is an unusual death.—Kww(talk) 02:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Again, many here seem to miss that circumstances and context are a key point. Yeah, nothing about driving a vehicle over a cliff is unusual, unless it comes out it is the very vehicle you have invented. --cyclopiaspeak! 10:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
      • That would be an ironic death, not an unusual one.—Kww(talk) 14:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
        • The two things are not mutually exclusive, in this case. It's both ironic and unusual. --cyclopiaspeak! 14:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
          • Just ironic, I'm afraid. Single-vehicle accidents are quite common, and irony doesn't make something unusual. Regardless, this is why I support an objective standard of multiple sources: I don't want to have to fight these things out item by item, I'd rather put a reasonable inclusion standard in place and abide by the results. There's going to be enough item-by-item fighting about the reliability of sources when we can find multiple sources, and we don't need to further waste our efforts arguing about the reliability the judgement call of a single copywriter. —Kww(talk) 14:47, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
              • That specific case aside, I absolutely agree. I agreed above that we need 2 or more sources; my point is that we should stop dismissing what sources say about cases just because we don't agree with them. --cyclopiaspeak! 14:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Only if we have confidence that the sources in question are WP:RS for making a claim of unusual. For now, the only sources I have seen that can reliable make a claim of an unusual death are forensic and medical sources. We've already demonstrated a number of cases where Fortean times has listed a death as unusual that is in fact rather common.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
That has not been "established" in any way, that is just your opinion. See discussion above. --cyclopiaspeak! 18:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Outside suggestion

I'm an outside editor who has never edited this article (voted Keep in AfD #7). But I had a suggestion on how to handle the criteria problem. The first thing is understand the inclusion criteria is going to based on editorial decision. For example, the article 2000 does not contain everything that happened in the year 2000. Rather editors have control over what to include and exclude based on what they consider significant enough for the article. It's an internal Wikipedia editorial decision, not an external source-based decision. Once that is understood "unusual" is an editorial decision, what would make it easier is a set of agreed on guidelines on what types of unusual deaths to include/exclude, similar to the special guidelines used at WP:NOTE. One the guidelines are established (and they can be as complex as needed derived from real world examples), it makes inclusion/exclusion decisions fairly trivial. It would also create a fascinating set of rules which IMO could be as interesting as the list itself. Create tropes, look for patterns, classify (in the rules). -- Green Cardamom (talk) 20:43, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Its the Wikipedia editors ability to determine WP:UNDUE weight, and whether a particular source represents the mainstream academic view, but not to decide "unusual". That must first have been presented by a reliable source. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:33, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

"noted as being unusual by multiple sources"

Article seems to have objective inclusion criteria in its second sentence. Unfortunately it seems that large majority of entries completely fail that criteria. Are regular editors here planning to remove those entries or replace criteria with something else? Actual criteria at this moment seems to be "evaluated and determined by anonymous wikipedia experts", but I suspect that most people don't actually want to add this into article.--Staberinde (talk) 20:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall any consensus to toss that up there, just someone did one day, and everyone just ignored it. No reason why anything should require multiple sources here, when you only need one source everywhere else on Wikipedia. Dream Focus 20:43, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
There is, as of now, no clear consensus on what merits inclusion in this list. You can see a huge RFC, that remains unclosed, with no clear consensus, somewhere above.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:14, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
If the current AfD lets the article survive, I think we all agree we have to put down such criteria once and for all. --cyclopiaspeak! 21:49, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • No, we should avoid trying make precise rules per WP:CREEP and WP:NOTLAW. Each entry should be judged on its merits. If there seems to be a problem with a particular entry, it should be tagged and discussed. Trying to discuss them all at once in a general way will just waste a lot of time per WP:LIGHTBULB. Warden (talk) 10:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
  • CREEP is about the creation and addition of policies and guidelines it doesnt have anything to do with specific criteria for an article. List articles REQUIRE specific objective and unambiguous inclusion criteria WP:LSC. The "noted as being unusual by multiple sources" requirement is a method of at least attempting to apply WP:UNDUE in that it will show that at least more than one bored reporter has had the opinion that the incident is "unusual". -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Here TRPOD gets it right. We need to pin down some reasonable criteria. That will require compromise and I'm sure it will not satisfy completely either party, but that's exactly why it needs to be done, otherwise this article will remain forever a battleground. --cyclopiaspeak! 12:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
  • "Each entry should be judged on its merits." - that is basically textbook example of original research. That if something is "unusual" or not needs to be judged by reliable sources. Wikipedia editor discussion should be required only in cases where multiple sources contradict each other or then source uses ambiguous wording, and that should apply only for very small percentage of potential entries.--Staberinde (talk) 16:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
  • WP:LSC states, "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed (for example, lists of unusual things or terrorist incidents), membership criteria should be based on reliable sources." In other words, we look to the sources to establish what is appropriate. Each entry will tend to have different sources and so the way they describe and treat that entry will vary. By definition, we are dealing with unusual events here and so they will naturally tend to be sui generis. Trying to construct exact rules for exceptional cases would be futile. Warden (talk) 12:48, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree wholly with Colonel Warden. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:03, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Let's sit down, breathe and try to get these inclusion criteria

The AfD closed as keep, and it seems from the closing rationale that further AfDs won't be met with joy, unless policy is vastly changed - but this also seems to be remote for now. I suppose therefore we have to sit at a table, stop the animosity (starting from myself -I haven't exactly kept my cool in these discussions and I apologize, especially with TheRedPenOfDoom), and lay down some criteria. Let's work towards a compromise. A good compromise will make no one happy, but will make all of us not too unhappy. I think we should start with each one laying down a sketch the criteria they would like, then we start to see the areas of overlap between editors, and then we can put down a couple clear-cut alternatives for a RfC. I'll start.--cyclopiaspeak! 11:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Cyclopia proposed criteria

Death events will be included on the list if one or more of these conditions is met:

  • Reported as "unusual", "weird", "unique" or synonymous wording in:
    • at least two news sources
    • one or more book sources, including but not limited to books devoted, in full or in a significant part, to the topic of unusual deaths
    • one or more academic publications, including but not limited to medicine and forensic peer-reviewed journals
  • Reported as being the only case of death ever known by the described cause in a reliable source. "Cause" does not indicate here only the immediate cause (e.g. trauma) but is intended to describe the circumstances which directly led to the immediate cause (e.g. trauma caused by a cassowary).

Death events cannot be included within or excluded from the list by simple consensus of editors because this would represent WP:OR. However deaths considered unusual by editors can be included in a subpage of the talk for other editors to look for sources about.--cyclopiaspeak! 11:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

  • The article has survived yet again and it is a good result in that further attempts to delete it would now require some change in policy. The recent attempt by PBP to create such a policy was opposed with a snow close against the proposal. So, the principle if it ain't broke, don't fix it applies. Per WP:CREEP and WP:NOTFORUM, we should focus upon improving the article rather than rules-lawyering. I have just added some interesting details about Saint Lawrence, for example. By fleshing out such entries, we will get a better practical feel for the sources and the way forward. Warden (talk) 12:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Colonel, you cannot ignore " And the inclusion criteria can and should be drafted by a community discussion on it, not by deleting the article. If editors feel that this still hasn't been hammered out properly, an RFC should be started and the results of that RFC should be drafted into a firm policy on the matter." (or you can, but that will just confirm your lack of being here to improve the encyclopedia) -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:58, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Can I move this comment above? Or putting it as a proposal for criteria? I'd like to have a clean list of each interested editors' proposed criteria (or proposal to not have such criteria, as you seem to put forward). --cyclopiaspeak! 12:36, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm not sure exactly what you mean but I wish to make my opposition to your plan very clear and will resist attempts to force this through. Warden (talk) 12:51, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I assume all your proposed criteria at the top are notionally separated by OR rather than AND. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
  • @Colonel Warden:, the idea is not to discuss the proposals by support/oppose now. That is going to result in the constant back-and-forth threads that didn't show to be very productive. The idea is that each one of us lays down what the criteria should or shouldn't be, in a separate paragraph. Once we know what cards we have on the table, we start seeing where and how they look similar or not to each other, and we start drafting compromises. @Martinevans123:, I have amended above: Yes, it is an OR. --cyclopiaspeak! 13:37, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Whilst I agree with Colonel Warden that "fleshing out" is a good idea, I guess it can't be done in an attempt to add significance that is not directly claimed by the WP:RS? Else that would be WP:OR? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:50, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
  • At first glance this seems quite solid proposal.--Staberinde (talk) 10:47, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
  • oppose this criteria; it is too permissive, and would allow essentially a copy/paste of the Fortean times books, which we have established elsewhere publish many deaths that are in no way unusual.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:14, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • oppose Change to excluding books, periodicals, or columns devoted, in full or in a significant part, to the topic of unusual happenings and I might go for it. Such columns and books have a financial incentive to sensationalize items and describe them as "unusual" when they are not.—Kww(talk) 02:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I understand where you are coming from, but at a glance it seems plain weird to remove exactly the sources that are most devoted to the very subject. All commercial sources have a "financial incentive", after all, to be read.--cyclopiaspeak! 09:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Cyclopia 2nd proposed criteria

Following the discussion below on FT and similar sources, and others, I propose a revision: Death events will be included on the list if one or more of these conditions is met:

  • Reported as "unusual", "weird", "unique" or synonymous wording in:
    • at least two news sources
    • one or more book sources
      • Books devoted to unusual happenings can be used as the only source if and only if there is consensus that they are routinely reliable on the topic. Other books on the topic can be used, but only as an addition to other sources (e.g. to corroborate to a news, book, or journal source).
    • one or more academic publications, including but not limited to medicine and forensic peer-reviewed journals
  • Reported as being the only case of death ever known by the described cause in a reliable source. "Cause" does not indicate here only the immediate cause (e.g. trauma) but is intended to describe the circumstances which directly led to the immediate cause (e.g. trauma caused by a cassowary).
  • Death events cannot be included in the list by simple consensus of editors because this would represent WP:OR. However deaths considered unusual by editors can be included in a subpage of the talk for other editors to look for sources about.
  • Death events, if meeting the requirements above, cannot be excluded unless there is overwhelming evidence that the death event, including all the relevant context and not the mere immediate cause, is indeed too common (e.g. more than a few cases with identical or almost identical circumstances can be sourced and reported). [Note: On this I have a proposal below]

--cyclopiaspeak! 09:54, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Masem proposed criteria

Another suggestion to add to those above is to require that either the person(s) are notable (blue-linked, article existing already; ideally where the person's death is not the only reason they are notable), or that there is a clear link target where the death would likely be discussed in more detail. In either case, the situation around the death will likely be explained in more detail at that target article, so the short blurb here would be sufficient to explain the unusual part. This would allow a case like the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" incident which is described at KDND's page, where the person was otherwise non-notable. --MASEM (t) 14:14, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Obiwankenobi proposed criteria

Different set of proposed criteria:

  1. Deaths described as "unusual", "bizarre", "strange", "rare", "unique" or synonyms in English and other languages in both:
    1. One or more academic publications, including but not limited to medicine and forensic peer-reviewed journals, AND
    2. One or more non-medical/non-academic RS (e.g. newspaper or book)
The advantage of these criteria is they will provide an intersection between deaths described as "unusual" in the medical literature, where we at least have some confidence that they can make this claim, along with "unusual" in a newspaper, in order to filter out the thousands of deaths that are unusual for a particular medical specialty but not unusual to a broader public. If we simply allow the books in without any filtering, it would mean we could just copy/paste the whole Fortean times book here, which would add several hundred deaths, and go against WP:NOT.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:29, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
A = Academic definition of unusual; B = Popular culture definition of unusual; green = Wikipedia's list
question: are the sub 1) 2) connected by an "and" or an "or"? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
AND. Sorry, clarified.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:16, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose I feel this is too restrictive as well. Obiwankenobi himself helped make it clear that there are two partially different categories of unusual deaths on which different sources focus -medical and forensic ones vs general "weird tales" sources. There may be an overlap between the two but I doubt it makes sense to require that we have to focus on this overlap. A death may be medically mundane and yet broadly and verifiably considered unusual because of circumstances; viceversa, a medically unusual death is not necessarily one that a layman would recognize as such. That seems clear, even if I was skeptical at first. How to solve this? I don't know, but I suppose a good alternative might be splitting the list. This would make order, reduce size, help manageability and allow for different criteria to be developed, tailored to each scenario. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I think the intersection will give us a much better list. To start with, we will have a much better sourcing on "unusual", as we will be using truly reliable sources that at least have a leg to stand on w.r.t. unusual deaths - and then we are essentially filtering this list to the "unusual" deaths that have been recognized in the broader media so as to limit the size. For example, Chainsaw suicide did not just happen once; there are at least 10 cases reported in the literature I found through quick googling, and I'm sure there are many more cases, but I think only one made the broader media, so that's a good example of a cross-over. The problem with "circumstances", as RPOD has pointed out elsewhere, is that the circumstances of every death are completely unique. The fact that some certain detail makes a death ironic does not necessarily render it more unusual, since the vast majority of deaths are not chronicled in this way. Additionally, this filtering above will help the list avoid the current bias towards "notable" people dying in rather mundane ways (like falling off a horse) - if we aren't going to limit the list to notable people, then we shouldn't have any bias towards them even if the popular media sources do.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:27, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I see several problems with this. First, ancient deaths are unlikely to be reported in medical sources. This would bring a huge bias: almost all cases would be recent. Second, your definition of "mundane" is indeed quite unusual. In several discussion you kept making the "falling off a horse" example, but the point are the circumstances in which you fall off a horse. For example, dying burning alive is sadly still common. Dying burning alive in a concoction you built yourself to kill people because you were asked to test it is another matter entirely. And this brings us to the fact that many deaths are medically trivial, but the circumstances are such that they can be nonetheless reported widely as unusual or such. The intersection seems to be to lead to a poorer list that misses many examples our readers would expect and that could be well sourced. --cyclopiaspeak! 10:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Note: I said academic sources, this doesn't have to be restricted to medical/forensic journals. We would thus accept an unusual death if it was covered as such in an academic history. The brazen bull example is more "inventors killed by their own invention", which is a much better place for it. As for the horses, List_of_horse_accidents demonstrates that dying by horse is rather sadly common amongst notable people who spend a lot of time on horses, and the "circumstances" of their deaths are almost always "unique" - for example, William III of england died after his horse tripped on a molehill. What a great irony - the great king brought down by a molehill. But it's still not unusual, in that many kings died from falling off their horses, and their horses probably tripped over all manner of things. Again, if we go by your criteria, we can copy/paste all of the Fortean times books. Is that really what we want?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:35, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
What counts to decide if molehills or else count enough for unusualness is the opinion of sources, I think. I may personally agree with all your assessment, if we were in the pub over a pint of ale; but here I'd rather leave it to what printed books and other sources say. If this means we can report all the deaths reported by the books you cite, so be it -for me it's no problem; we have to see what other people want.--cyclopiaspeak! 14:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
This is the whole problem with your approach. You are not exercising any editorial judgement on the quality of the sources. WP:RS specifically asks us to do so. We would not use boingboing.net as a source for news about North Korea, and we would not use the New York times as a source for understanding the current medical consensus around cancer treatment. Each source needs to be judged on its merits - we cannot just blindly accept someone saying "this is unusual" and therefore we go with it. My proposal above addresses this problem in a robust fashion, as we are joining two different definitions of unusual because unusual is such a wily and hard to control word, so filtering down to things both academics and popular writers consider unusual will give us a much more robust list. And I really think a copy/paste of Fortean times books is ridiculous; they would not be considered a RS for almost any other purpose. Just look at their latest article here [2] - a guy was cutting down a tree and it fell on him and killed him. Do you know how many lumberjacks have been killed by falling trees? [3] These guys simply aren't to be trusted when it comes to "strange". Perhaps "ironic", but it's no more ironic that a dude in Florida died cutting down his tree than that a lumberjack died cutting down a tree. It's rag-bag trivia, and we should not take them at their word.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:07, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think in this case our own editorial assessment is any better than the sources themselves. There is a space for editorial judgement when there are clear cases, like (example) the fact that newspapers do report rubbish on medicine and science, for example. This is clear: when they flatly contradict or exaggerate what comes from academic papers on the discovery, we should use the latter and refuse the former. Here there is not a better source where we can always go and say "of these two, the former is reliable, the latter is not". As such I maintain, for example, that newspaper reporters (that surely deal with lots of deaths every day, for their own very job) are at least as skilled as us in recognizing what is unusual in this case, and probably are more reliable than any of our judgement. The more so for sources devoted to the topic. Everything else is not mere editorial judgement, but our WP:OR on what is "unusual enough for me". While I agree that having two news sources is a minimum to guarantee a modicum of compactness, requiring the intersection of two entirely different angles on unusualness, both of them legitimate, seems not to add any benefit. --cyclopiaspeak! 15:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I disagree. We can enact editorial judgement when source X says a death is unusual, and then we find reliable source Y that says such deaths occur around 1,000 times/year. For example, one "unusual" case cited somewhere was an inmate who committed suicide with bedsheets; a survey of same by a RS found that some significant portion of inmate suicides were by hanging, and significant portion of those were by bedding. If a source repeatedly makes claims that we can easily disprove, then we should discard it's claims. I would note that Fortean times should not be considered a RS for "unusual" here, as they have no academic basis or methodology upon which to make that assessment. Requiring two news sources won't be enough; news articles tend to parrot eachother; a given wire story can appear in multiple news sources, but just b/c AP called it a "unusual" death doesn't mean they have more credibility than a beat journalist working Detroit's crime scenes. The requirement of academic sources, and especially academic medical/forensic sources for more recent deaths, would really get us to a meaty list of deaths that are much more likely to be unusual. Otherwise, wikipedia is parroting claims by unreliable sources, which violates WP:RS.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:05, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
It's not that clear-cut. The issue is: what does it mean "such deaths"? Again, the problem is circumstances. Take the kid killed by the cassowary. Depending on how we analyze it:
- Death from trauma: trivial
- Death from animal attack: less trivial, but still trivial
- Death from being attacked by a ratite bird: Not common, but ostrichs are known to have killed a few people.
- Death from a cassowary: Only one known case in history.
So, at which level should we make our assessment? I would agree if you find a source that proves that the most detailed level possible is very common, but apart from that? Each death can be either seen as completely unique or as trivial, depending on which circumstances one takes into account and which ones one discards. Therefore we can't make our own original research to take a source and say "such deaths occur everyday", because in this case basically every death can be reduced to trauma, burning, poisoning or some other very general category, if one wants. To try to enter this, is to enter a nightmare of endless points of view. We should enter no such hell: we should let the sources do the assessment, and just report. --cyclopiaspeak! 17:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
There is more than 1 death by cassowary registered (see Cassowary#Cassowary_attacks); in any case, this particular death may fit in with the criteria above, because it is covered in both academic and news sources. But it's not that surprising, considering the cassowary was determined by the Guinness book of worlds records to be the worlds most dangerous bird.
In any case, I think you're confusing what WP:OR means - it is to prevent us from putting a claim like "Loggers die all the time from trees falling on them" - just because obiwan happens to think so. OTOH, if source A claims "This is a unique death in the history of the world - the first time anyone has ever been killed by a Cassowary" - and then we have a RS from an Ornithologist who says "There are many records of natives being killed by this bird." - then we should not henceforth parrot the claim that it is a unique death. As editors, we are allowed to do all sorts of OR -- that is essentially what populates talk pages; people saying "source X claims A, source Y claims B, what do we put" - and it is a process of editorial decision-making, respecting WP:RS, WP:DUE, WP:NPOV and so on to decide what to put, how much to include, and which claims to accept. We don't put in the lede for Global warming that "Global warming is a bullshit scientific theory" even though plenty of RS have made exactly this claim, and it is not WP:OR for wikipedia editors to disavow those claims as fringe or unscientific. When it comes to deaths, I think we have demonstrated rather clearly that Fortean times is not a reliable source, so all books by that publisher should be disallowed, because they have made many claims for "unusual" deaths which are not unusual at all, and not considered to be unusual by reliable sources that have actually done statistical studies or that have a deep experience in causes of death. I don't think we should be debating each individual death here, however, I do think we should have clear-cut inclusion criteria and then just follow them - but where our OR can come in is determining the quality of sources. My proposal above is basically that Fortean times and random journalists are not RS for 'unusual' deaths, and we have demonstrated in spades why this is the case; so instead, we propose to use newspaper to filter medically or forensically 'unusual' deaths down to those also considered so by popular culture, as away of limiting the size of the list.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I am not saying that you would violate WP:OR. However it is a sort of decision that comes only from your own personal assessment, not from a somewhat neutral, objective assessment. While I know that we have all the right and even the duty to do editorial decisions whenever necessary, I disagree that we should bluntly refuse all of such sources. If we have a clear-cut case like: if source A claims "This is a unique death in the history of the world - the first time anyone has ever been killed by a Cassowary" - and then we have a RS from an Ornithologist who says "There are many records of natives being killed by this bird." - then we should not henceforth parrot the claim that it is a unique death., then of course we can remove it: it is clear what is the context of the uniqueness, and it is clear it has been refuted (Even then, again, context is important: being killed by car is mundane, but being the first killed by a car, in a time when cars were few, slow and far between novelty items, is not mundane at all, for example). That can be fine. But I would not discard any decent news or book source unless we have such a clear refutation in some other equally or more reliable source. I refute your claim that Fortean times and random journalists are not RS for 'unusual' deaths, and we have demonstrated in spades why this is the case. Nothing of the sort has been demonstrated. All what has been demonstrated is that they sometimes claim unusualness of something you personally don't think unusual, but unless I see an overwhelming load of cases refuted explicitly as in your example above, with all the relevant context being debated and debunked (and not the mere immediate cause of death per se), no such "demonstration" has happened. --cyclopiaspeak! 18:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Cyclopia, can you prove that there is no teapot orbiting at the point midway between mars and earth? I am not basing my rejection of "unusual" based on personal opinions, I'm basing it on many reports in reliable sources - do you know how many suicides-by-chainsaw there have been? There is a whole literature on suicide-by-power tools, with people investigating all of the different ways people have come up with to commit suicide using these tools. You keep on claiming that I am the one who thinks something is not unusual, but I've demonstrated again and again that many of the "unusual" deaths are simply not unusual by any reasonable definition of the term. Your cassowary example is one of the few that could make the list, I think, since while there have been many attacks, there haven't been many documented deaths (but we have to be careful of recency bias - I'm sure a survey of papua new guinean tribesmen would generate lots of stories of ancestors killed by this rather vicious bird - esp if they are attacked and unable to access modern medical care). I know what you'd really love is an anti-fortean-times book by James Randi that walks through every death and debunks it - but that doesn't exist - not all claims and not all books are worth the time and effort to debunk. Fortean Times collects trivia, and no serious academic is going to take time to go after their claims - instead, their claims are ignored. Do you see the fortean times books cited by anyone? Is there any serious literature that uses Fortean times as a source? If not, then we shouldn't either. There is a whole study of citation science, looking at highly cited articles. How often is Fortean times cited in a forensic or medical journal to establish the unusualness of a cause of death? And no, I don't think someone being killed by a car - even if it's the first time someone was killed by a car, is special at all - there always has to be a first. If it was the *only* time someone had been killed by a car you may have something, but there was also a first person to die by sword, by bullet, by guillotine, by firing squad, by ... none of those deaths would be 'unusual' in the sense of "not part of regularly experienced death" --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Fair enough. I'm getting persuaded that the FT is indeed a questionable source also for this article. However, again, you have the tendency to miss context in this kind of discussion, and that is my issue with any editorial judgement based on "these statistics show this death is not really unusual". Remember the CO2 poisoning thing you also quote below? A coroner and other people involved in the story called it repeatedly unusual, and it was reported as such by multiple news. Why? Are they insane? Don't they know CO2 poisoning is tragically common? But the issue was not the CO2 poisoning itself -that is of course trivial per se- the point is the chain of events that led to poisoning. I repeat: in theory, if you look at the ultimate cause, every death is trivial; viceversa, if you see all the Rube Goldberg line of events that brings to a death, almost every death is unique. The claim that we can objectively and satisfactorily decide if a given death is unusual or not is thus flawed. It may seem intuitive to you, but it is not. This must be set in stone. Now, your proposed criteria would indeed remove such ambiguity, but at the price of taking a too narrow intersection. You said you don't refer necessarily to medical sources, but then I'd say an historian's paper and a news report are not differently qualified when dealing on what is unusual. I maintain that reporters, who deal with tragic events every day -it's their job- can be relied upon for claims of unusualness. But I'm still worried with your global mindset: what if something that fits your criteria above is still not "unusual enough" by your standards? Would you fight inclusion nonetheless? --cyclopiaspeak! 09:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
The CO2 case was because a packet of chips blocked the chimney. A blocked chimney (eg the proximate cause) is a COMMON cause of C0 poisoning - see The CO level can rise if a chimney becomes partially blocked (a dead bird, birds nest, insects, small animal such as a cat or racoon, construction, etc. - there are tons of websites out there talking about the risk of blocked chimneys - and chimneys can be blocked by all sorts of things. Now, how many times in history has a chips packet blocked a chimney? I don't know. But how many times has a red-bellied robin's nest blocked a chimney, vs how many times a dead blue-spotted woodpecker, vs how many times a family of racoons that the family had fed 5 minutes earlier, vs how many times was it blocked by a bunch of leaves from a rare type of oak tree, vs. construction debris from the French neighbor, termites nest, ants nest, wasps nest, and so on... We don't know, and the coroners don't know either, and they weren't making some sort of claim that chimneys never get blocked, they were simply saying that in their experience they haven't heard of a chimney being blocked by a packet of crisps. I admit, it may be the first time that a packet of chips has blocked a chimney, but who cares? Will we also catalog the first time a magazine blocks a chimney, and the first time a newspaper does so, and the first time a packet of crackers, the first time a package of cookies, a can of beer, etc, and so on and so forth? The cause of death was still CO poisoning due to blocked chimney, and if you get into proximate causes of proximate causes it's never-ending. here's another "rare and unusual case": [4] Many car accidents are caused by random things - a deer than ran across the road, a distracting phone call, a spilled packet of chips, a spilled glass of coke, a spilled cup of coffee, a spilled cup of starbucks moccachino, a spilled cup of starbucks moccachino with extra cinnamon... how far do you take it? I think we should only go ONE level deep - e.g. the cause of death, and the proximate cause of death, determined in *general* terms. Not "ordinary death but took a while to find the body" or "ordinary death that happened at a coincidental time" or "ordinary death that was ironic" - for me, an unusual death is where the cause of death is very unusual and almost unique, or the proximate cause of death can be shown to be very unusual or almost unique. So, the cassowary may fit, because we only have a few instances of this, even though the cause of death was bleeding to death, the proximate cause was attack by a bird. As to your other questions, no, a reporter is NOT held to the same standards as a historian or medical professional writing for a peer-reviewed journal - there is a night and day difference. Did you read what the Fortean Times said about their sources - how they are apt to repeat urban myths, recycle old stories, exaggerate for effect, and even invent things? Newspapers - especially ones like News of the Weird, other tabloids, etc, simply cannot be trusted to be telling the whole truth, and FT sources from those types of newspapers. OTOH, an academic publication, which is submitted to a journal for peer review or published as an academic study, has a lot more chance of getting things right. I would say, we could add to mine your latest criteria, whereby if we have an academic source + a newspaper, both from 1950 that claim a death is unusual, and then we find 10 more cases in the coming decades, we eliminate it. Thus, sources can be put in without contest if they fit by criteria, but can be removed by consensus if editors can determine that the death in question is indeed not that unusual through the provision of evidence.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:06, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
@Obiwankenobi:, you are just proving my point. You think we should go one level deep, you provide your own reasoning, but it is all relative and subjective. We decided that's not the way to go. Because then, if we are going to do it arbitrarily, then we go back at "editors decide what is unusual". And this fails. We gotta stick to the sources, regardless of our own perplexity at their judgement. --cyclopiaspeak! 17:28, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
You were the one who keeps bringing up the causal chain which led to the death. And no, we don't have to stick with sources; we have to apply editorial discretion when judging the claims of sources. For example, if a death is not called "unusual" in 20 sources that report on it, and then called unusual by the Fortean times, it doesn't mean in the article about that death we'd say "X died in an unusual fashion" - we might say "X died. Source Y called the death "unusual"" - but since we have a list here, we need some acceptance criteria; otherwise the list will grow too quickly to be of use. For all of these "unusual" lists there is normally some sort of editorial control in terms of inclusion criteria; for example, List of unusual time signatures has a specific criteria applied, that was more or less decided by wikipedia editors. The criteria I've specified gets us closest to NPOV, by relying on high-quality academic sources to make the initial determination of "unusual", then filtering that to those deaths still considered unusual by lay sources.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:15, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

TheRedPenOfDoom proposed criteria

To meet standards as clearly stated in policy " Even with well-sourced material, if you use it out of context, or to advance a position not directly and explicitly supported by the source, you are engaging in original research" (emph added) the criteria for an article whose subject is: "This list includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history" needs to be something along the lines of:

  • Specifically noted as being unusual in the context of being an unusual death throughout history
    • by a recognized expert in the subject of "unusual deaths throughout history" (if such a specialty exists-)
    • or by multiple reliable sources

We need to make sure we are applying WP:OR and WP:UNDUE and not taking a reporter's off hand descriptor of " unusual" to falsely present their use as being "unusual death in the history of humans". Even including items in collections of " 10 Unusual Deaths" that are not made by experts in the field we are giving UNDUE weight to a single voice.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

warning

I personally think the warning template is not needed at the top of the page; if someone creates an new RM and consensus is that there hasn't been a shift in policy/consensus, then the warning would apply. if the warning is kept, both statements by the closing admins should be kept and allow the user to judge for themselves the full meaning.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:22, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

  • I agree that the warning is misleading, probably contradictory to WP:CCC, and in general not needed. pbp 21:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Things like this severely wear me out. The comment by the DRV closing administrator is not relevant to the warning on this talk page, as it's no more than an empirical observation that the endorsed final statement was an admonition. It was directed at those who couldn't seem to wrap their head around this concept. It was not an approval of future superfluous nominations, nor did it remove/change any of the validity of the statement. Furthermore, the only point of the admonition/notice/warning on here (and the wording in it) is to attempt to discourage the creation of further superfluous deletion discussions, (especially by editors not familiar with the last 7 AFDs or the standing community consensus) - Note: it does not actually prevent someone from doing so, as it's not moratoria. In other words it's only there to try to stop more of the community's time from being wasted. At any rate, the only possible effect of Obiwankenobi and TRPoD's change I can see is the further enablement of superfluous/useless nominations by those not familiar with the AFD/DRV/consensus process. While I don't necessarily think this was TRPoD's intention, it seems fairly clear this is exactly what Obiwankenobi wants to happen (hence his edit summary). That is unacceptable, and it's also edit warring. Obiwankenobi could have easily made his points here without touching the template (although it's already well known that he hated the admonition I gave in the first place), but instead seems to just really want more drama. Well I don't, and personally I'm about done with this ridiculous feud going on here. If you all like to waste your time having the same damn discussions over and over which go nowhere because you never want to learn or see things from a different perspective, be my guest. I've got better things to do with my time than argue with a bunch of stubborn children. — Coffee // have a cup // essay // 22:52, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Ok, cheers.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:41, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

2nd criteria and a further proposal: classes of unusual deaths

I added a refinement of my previous proposal: Talk:List_of_unusual_deaths#Cyclopia_2nd_proposed_criteria. Please comment above on it.

Meanwhile, I was thinking that certain types of deaths can be indeed regularly reported as unusual, while there having been several cases of it. In this case I think that we should include them not as individual events, but as classes of unusual deaths. Take suicide by chainsaw, for example. Several cases exist of it, but it ends up reported often as something freakish. We can therefore report that yes, there are a few cases reported, but even if not unique, it is indeed unusual (unusual does not mean "once in the history of time"). This would allow a more informative entry, where one could also report statistics etc. and it would allow to include entries without the reader losing the general context of these events. --cyclopiaspeak! 09:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Yes, this would be sensible, especially where we have articles or sub-lists about those unusual causes of death such as execution by elephant. I set up a structure of this kind at list of baseball deaths and like the way it's worked out so far. Warden (talk) 17:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Formatted as a well-sourced article, that could be reasonable. At least something like that is quantifiable.—Kww(talk) 04:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks. What I mean is that, instead of bitching on "yes this is unusual, sources call it like that" "no this isn't, it happens every year", we can put it like this:

*Power tools suicide is one of the rarest ways of suicide[ref] but still happens on average 1-2 times a year[ref][ref]. Most cases involve a chainsaw[ref]...

(note that I just made content up, it is just to give an idea of what an entry on the list would look like)--cyclopiaspeak! 19:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Now that I would oppose. If you want to make an article about "suicide by power tool", feel free to give it a try and see if you can write something that will hold up. Placing entries on this list with some kind of overarching blanket entry, no.—Kww(talk) 19:40, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't understand your objection. Can you elaborate? --cyclopiaspeak! 20:00, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
It would appear to be an effort to take an objective class (suicide by power tool) and write an explanation that then places all members of the objective class into a subjective class (unusual). Articles about small, objective groups of things are generally unproblematic, so I see no reason to discourage their existence. Making subjective judgements about them generally is problematic.—Kww(talk) 21:19, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@Kww:Okay, this makes sense. If there is a source considering them together as unusual or exceptionally rare, however, I'd say one can give them a go. Take this forensic paper that starts with: A suicide committed with a chainsaw ias a rare event. It is an uncommonly reported incident and the forensic literature comprises few case reports of chainsaw suicides. I agree we can have an article on the topic perhaps, but while we haven't one, it seems better to report such a general assessment, maybe followed by one or two notable cases, than either nothing or a list of nearly identical incidents. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Cyclopia, if you have material that can be added to a properly constructed, non-controversial article that doesn't have problems with original research, why put it here?—Kww(talk) 01:18, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Why having a paragraph on Venus atmosphere, if we have already Atmosphere of Venus? You know it is not mutually exclusive. --cyclopiaspeak! 08:14, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Because both of those articles could be a properly constructed, non-controversial article that doesn't have problems with original research, unlike this one.—Kww(talk) 13:12, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
  • My impression is that nail guns are more commonly used than chainsaws but such cases are still described as unusual. They would both go in what this WHO study would call "Other methods". Warden (talk) 20:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC: What qualifies?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
TRPoD asked for an uninvolved admin to review this, as they felt that Colonel Warden's close did not adequately match the consensus. I have to agree with TRPoD here--there is no possible way to read "editorial discretion" as the consensus. In terms of actual numbers, we have 4 people asserting the "editorial discretion" position. 7 editors assert the position that we must have reliable sources state that the death is unusual, though there was mention (and no disagreement) that we do not need the explicit word "unusual", and other similar terms would suffice. 2 editors held forth that we should simply delete the article because sourcing and deciding was impossible; said position is closer to the strict interpretation of sources, though a bit unrelated to the topic at had. 2 other editors take a position that doesn't really directly answer the RfC question. Note, further, that one of the "editorial discretion" editors explicitly states that allowing this would be an IAR exemption to WP:OR. However, as pointed out above, and as per WP:IAR itself and how it is regularly interpreted, IAR cannot be used by a minority party to simply assert that a rule that they don't like doesn't apply in a given situation. By definition, an appropriate IAR action will have the approval of an overwhelming number of editors. Such is not the case here.
Thus, absent a clear majority in favor of an IAR position, and given the clear policy arguments in support of a normal WP:V approach, the clear policy based consensus is to keep this list only to those deaths for whom there are reliable sources (as noted by one person, these need to be high quality sources, not tabloid journals who regularly fling around these words for fun) that the death is in someway exceptional. All other entries (those for whom someone might say "Come on, this is obviously strange") should be removed.
Editors who still wish to assert an IAR exemption to this article or who believe that somehow our total policies trump the plain reading of WP:V are welcome to pursue further dispute resolution, such as by starting a thread at WP:DRN. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Can editors determine on a talk page what qualifies as an "unusual death" and should be in the List of unusual deaths or must the reliable source specifically use the word "unusual" or synonymy in it?
  • Since we aren't convincing one another, need to just bring in more people to participate in this discussion. Please let everyone state their opinion. If you disagree with them, there is no need to repeat what you said constantly in response to every single person who says otherwise. Just state what you believe once, and its fine, we can see it.

As I mentioned before, the dictionary defines the word unusual as [5]

not normal or usual
different or strange in a way that attracts attention
not commonly seen, heard, etc.
  • If a talk page discussion determines there is consensus that something is an unusual death, can it be added to the list, even if the word "unusual" isn't in the article? Would this qualify as original research or just common sense? If it is original research, would the disclaimer at the top of WP:OR that says "This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow." apply here? The link attached to the word "normally" says to use common sense and its acceptable to ignore a rule. "Instead of following every rule, it is acceptable to use common sense as you go about editing. Being too wrapped up in rules can cause loss of perspective, so there are times when it is better to ignore a rule. Even if a contribution "violates" the precise wording of a rule, it might still be a good contribution." Dream Focus 18:14, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • 1) WP:OR and WP:V are clear: content must be in the sources and not the opinions or analysis of Wikipedia editors, therefore, YES the reliable source must be the one that specifically calls out the death as being unusual.
2) In addition, WP:UNDUE comes into play with Wikipedia editors voices and opinions standing in and misrepresenting based on their opinions rather than what the experts in the field determine to be unusual.
3) the WP:LSC "Selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. " and WP:NLIST "Furthermore, every entry in any such list requires a reliable source attesting to the fact that the named person is a member of the listed group.]" guidelines on inclusion criteria are clear - they must be objective. Requiring the source to have the word "unusual" or synonym is (mostly) objective and far more so than "the group of editors that was around that day thought it was".
4)The ability to Ignore the rules, comes with the important but frequently ignored conditional that when you ignore the rules you are improving the encyclopedia. There is no evidence that an even greater bloated trivia list of junk that a bunch of non experts decided was "unusual" is in any way an improvement to the encyclopedia.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
@User:Rivertorch I have never said that " random journalists are 'experts in the field' ". But that again goes to the faulty basis for the whole article, in that while a bunch of Wikipedia editors are most certainly not "experts in the field", neither are most of the sources used in the article and the criteria, instead of being loosened to add Wikipedia editors' opinions should, rather be tightened reflect the opinions and published work in the field and NOT just a random news clipping where a journalist happens to use the word that we can verify. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:24, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
@User:Rivertorch again: " Our readers will come to this list looking for a list of unusual, quirky, interesting deaths, ". The readers may come here for a lot of things. WP:NOT we are NOT a lot of things. We are an encyclopedia. If they are coming here looking for things that our editors thought were fun and quirky, they are coming to the wrong place for the wrong reasons. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:47, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't see your replies way up here until now. I'm going to reply here, rather than way below, because all this scrolling makes me dizzy. You used the phrase "experts in the field". If you weren't referring to the writers of articles used to source these entries, exactly who were you referring to? I'm dubious that there are any experts in the topic area of unusual deaths per se. It isn't an academic discipline and it isn't a field that lends itself to scholarly inquiry, as far as I know (not outside of some very narrow categories, anyway). I certainly wouldn't claim that Wikipedians are experts, but I think we're probably as capable as anyone of deciding whether a cow falling on a bed constitutes something unusual. As for WP:NOT, it's a policy I've cited quite a few times to quite a few people. I'm sure we're fully agreed on many things that Wikipedia is not, but if you think there's always a bright line, then we'll have to agree to disagree; we're certainly not a traditional encyclopedia, and I for one am not quite ready to slam shut the gates on various kinds of reliably sourced content that our readers might reasonably expect to find here. Uh-oh, there's that word, reasonably, again. You and I may have very different ideas about what is reasonable and what isn't, and I guess that's just the way it is. Thanks for starting the RfC. Rivertorch (talk) 03:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
as far as "we're probably as capable as anyone of deciding whether a cow falling on a bed constitutes something unusual."- the policies say we most certainly are not. per other policies such as the various aspects of WP:NPOV : WP:UNDUE / WP:VALID / Good research / WP:BALANCE "Good and unbiased research, based upon the best and most reputable authoritative sources available, helps prevent NPOV disagreements. " (we have people arguing that the least quality sources are all that we need) " treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. " "Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship." "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. " clearly requiring the source to make the assertion of "unusual" is required, but merely the bare minimum. the nature and quality of the person making the assertion, the context in which they are making the assertion etc all need to be incorporated in the criteria if we are to come anywhere close to being policy compliant on this article. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 04:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Editorial judgement does not extend to expanding upon sources. Our personal judgment about what is unusual doesn't matter: the only thing that matters is whether a reliable source categorizes the thing as unusual. WP:IAR is not intended to allow small groups of editors to declare certain articles exempt from sourcing policy.—Kww(talk) 18:28, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Just delete the whole article: The fact that this discussion even needs to be had bespeaks the chronic problems we have with this list. There is no such thing as a "usual" death; there is no cause that accounts for at least 50% of all deaths. pbp 19:51, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • It is not "expanding upon sources" to deem an item appropriate for a list if it meets common-sense criteria, and the focus here on WP:NOR and WP:V is misplaced. The question is not one of sourcing, or at least it shouldn't be; no one is suggesting we draw any conclusions for any entry on the list beyond what the sources say. The question is merely about how to decide what items are appropriate for inclusion in the first place, and reliance on a given source's use of certain keywords ("unusual" and its synonyms) is a hit-or-miss proposition. A newspaper reporting that someone crushed to death by a cow that fell on his bed is unlikely to explicitly characterize the death as "unusual" because it may safely assume that its readership will intuit that without being told.

    Fortunately, neither WP:NOR nor WP:V demands that sources using specific words exist to permit inclusion of content in an article. Wikipedia editors are expected to use good judgment in deciding these things. We are not mindless robots following an if x, then y flowchart. Will there be borderline instances where editors may legitimately disagree? Of course. But there will be many more instances (like the cow falling on the bed) where no one could reasonably argue that the death was not unusual.

    WP:UNDUE is a red herring. For a list such as this one that briefly mentions noteworthy events, the existence of a reliable source reporting a clearly unusual death should be sufficient to indicate suitability for inclusion. It also should be noted that this is a topic that doesn't lend itself to expert opinions, and the argument that random journalists are "experts in the field" and that we should be hung up on their choice of words on a given day is frankly absurd.

    WP:MOSLIST is a guideline, and like all guidelines it should be applied with care, not blindly followed to the letter when doing so would be illogical. This is an unusual list—I cannot find any other list on Wikipedia that is quite comparable—and we need to look at what serves our readers, not what serves our convenience. Our readers will come to this list looking for a list of unusual, quirky, interesting deaths, and I cannot imagine any of them could care less whether a random writer at a source we cite happens to deploy something from an approved list of adjectives. I'm optimistic enough to think we can agree most of the time that something either is or isn't unusual, and I honestly cannot fathom how decimating the article based on random journalists' word choices is in the best interest of building a comprehensive encyclopedia. Rivertorch (talk) 19:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

  • Comment. Whether a RS uses the specific word "unusual" should not be a concern, so long as it is verifiable that a death is unusual as that word is most readily understood. "Unusual" is not the only way to express that concept, and so we shouldn't fret over some other wording that breaks down to the same thing. postdlf (talk) 20:24, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • No one has ever suggested requiring the exact word "unusual" to appear. No one has objected to "Weird", "bizarre", "strange", etc.—Kww(talk) 20:38, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the words used to describe the death are less important than the nature of the source itself. If a web site/news column/TV show is devoted to "weird news" or "unusual deaths", or "stupid criminals", or such, then the credibility of that source should be immediately suspect. Such media is infected with many stories of dubious veracity, some of which get repeated in more credible sources such as newspapers who often reprint stories with little fact checking. The subject matter at hand here is an area that strongly overlaps with urban legends (which are often reprinted in many "reliable" sources), and we need to take that into account when we look at sourcing. It would greatly concern me to have a standard based on what words were used to describe a death without a strong consideration of the veracity of the story itself. Gigs (talk) 20:47, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Lighten up. It's one on Wikipedia's huh-whaddya-know articles, and people like writing them, people like reading them, and it's not like the article is sucking away data from the other articles or using up our limited supply of paper. It's referenced and not an embarrassment to the project or anything. As to original research, relax. What we don't want is someone stringing together facts (probably but not necessarily cherry-picked) and coming up with a new slant on some historical event and that sort of thing. I wouldn't worry too much if demises that a reasonable person might consider to be odd or funny or shocking or weird are stretched to fit under the rubric of "unusual". It's kind of semantic paper-shuffling to worry too much about that, in my opinion. All that said, it'd be reasonable to AfD the article if someone wants to, or rename it. These articles can be a maintenance problem, mainly a trimming problem, and there are a bunch entries that are too uninteresting or mundane to be in it, in my opinion. That's a different issue. Herostratus (talk) 02:49, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
  • In my experience, reliable news sources hardly ever explicitly describe an event as unusual, bizarre, etc – they just report the facts. A semi-random check of some of this article's sources seems to confirm this; there are one or two which quote a spokesperson as saying "this is really unusual", but I can't find any in which the source itself makes that claim. So the proposed selection criteria seem fundamentally flawed, and result in a pretty arbitrary list. On the other hand, I don't think it's acceptable for editors to decide amongst themselves which deaths are unusual. We're not experts in the subject, and what seems unusual to us might in fact be fairly common. So I suppose my answer to the RFC question is neither. It would be a shame to see this article deleted, though. Perhaps an alternative might be to move it into WP-space, where the rules aren't quite so stringent. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Lighten up per Herostratus, but also keep it on a short leash. I am a bit conflicted on this article, since on one hand I feel there can be a reasonable consensus on deaths that are practically unequivocally unusual, even if no source explicitly deems it so. On the other hand, I am worried a lot about legitimating WP:OR - here it is of little or no harm, but I don't want to soap the slopes. To whoever calls for deletion -the article is going to stay. It is controversial but lots of AfDs hovered between "keep" and "no consensus". Also, it is so popular that it has been called an "unforgettable entry" by Time magazine, and deleting it would only show how far removed is the project from the real world of our readers. Not that being popular is an argument for retention per se, at all, but it oughts to be considered among other things: WP is at the service of readers, and if our readers want something, we have to consider it, provided it is in line with our goals.
I think the best course of action is to deem this article a tightly controlled, short-leashed IAR exception to WP:OR. Call it an experiment. Having sources which deem the entry unusual, bizarre etc. should be mandatory when adding directly to the list. Entries without this requirement should be instead be posted on the talk page, and inclusion decided by consensus for each one. --cyclopiaspeak! 08:56, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
the conditional for IAR is that it "improves the encyclopedia". Can you specify what improvement you see happening because of the ignoring of the rules? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:32, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
We made a mistake ignoring the rules to let this article stay. The recent back-and-forth of what should stay and what should go proves that this article is more trouble than it is worth pbp 23:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict), TRPoD: That we don't miss obviously relevant entries that basically every reader would expect just because the coverage doesn't explicitly call it like that. That is clearly an improvement. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:49, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
readers "expect" to be able to add articles about their dog, to promote their favorite candidate, to wallow in slander when a piece of merchandise fails to live up to the unrealistic properties extolled in the commercial, however, we dont break our policies to allow that. Why would we break our policies to add content to an already bloated article? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
"We made a mistake ignoring the rules to let this article stay". Maybe, but the article's here, and it's apparently been AfD'd several times without success. It'd let that go and deal with the fact on the ground: the article's here. It's a big encyclopedia and it has some odd corners, see Wikipedia:Unusual articles, and it's not the end of the world. If we renamed the article to List of deaths that a reasonable person might find unusual, odd, macabrely amusing, ironic, or otherwise interesting we'd maybe not have to squabble about terminology. That name's too long, but let's just act as if that's the name, because that, after all, is what the article really is, and List of unusual deaths is a reasonable stand-in for that that most people will understand. Rules are OK, but there's no need to be pedantic when there's no great harm. Science will survive the existence of this article. Herostratus (talk) 03:02, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Changing the name to reflect the actual current state would still not address 1) the fact that sources and not wikipedia editors are required to make any analysis that appears in an article and 2) would further simply clarify that fact that it is an indiscriminate collection of information. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Those are two different issues. As to the first, you're being pedantic in my opinion. As to the second, you have a point, but. The article exists and will continue to exist, for good or ill. Given that, how to keep it in best trim? Requiring a source to have used the term "unusual" or one of some agreed-upon near-synonyms -- "bizzare" or "wierd" or whatever -= or just a turn of phrase that we feel justified in interpreting as meaning "unusual" would make the collection of data even more random. Because then we're at the mercy of the reporter's writing style and the journal's editorial style rather than our own collective judgement, and so here's the situation we'd likely have: "Wow, here's a death that's clearly really bizarre, but the reporter didn't say so and decided to just let the facts speak for themselves, so we can't include it. On the other hand, for some reason a reporter decided to call this other rather mundane death 'wierd', so we're bound to include it." I don't see how that's an improvement. Herostratus (talk) 21:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
There is never any policy or interpretation that binds us to include any particular piece of data. But for your example, including content solely because a single journalist happens to use the unusual is countered by WP:NPOV and its subpolicies that that we do not give WP:UNDUE weight to something that is not supported by Good Research.
But even if we were, that would just be even more of an incentive to attempt to get some type of inclusion criteria that actually addresses all of the policy issues currently haunting this article. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Sure we're bound to include data. We can't leave France out of List of countries in Europe even if we want to, and so on. In my opinion, you should go light with the policy-based stuff. Rules, like laws, are blunt instruments, and WP:OR wasn't written to cover articles like this. Instead of saying "We should do such-and-such because of the wording of a rule someone laid down for our serious historical and scientific articles", try "We should do such-and-such because it makes the article more useful for the reader" and so on. That's more likely to win my heart. Herostratus (talk) 00:01, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Its a little ludicrous at the least to compare something like "A journalist called an 80 year old man who died of a heart attack unusual so we must include it in the List of Unusual Deaths" with "France is a country in Europe and so we must include it in a list of countries in Europe." Similarly dont include Freedonia or East Prussia on the list of countries in eurorpe because that list has objective and clear criteria. And NPOV will clearly prevent someone from attempting to push the heart attack incident into the article even with the lousy level of criteria that currently exist. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm with pbp, Delete the whole article. Unless we can find an good academic source that provides clear measurable inclusion criterion, the article just becomes a lighting rod for WP:OR and sources that just wanted to use a shocking descriptor. I understand that the list goal is to use the mathematical concept of unusual, but how do we parse that from writers who just like it as a catchy descriptor without conducting OR? A Quick Google search shows that reliable sources like Discovery are including deaths that are being labeled unusual simply by narrowing the descriptor of the death so it only fits that one incident. I saw a death by Diarrhea (second most common cause of infant deaths worldwide) being describe as unusual because they narrowed it down to diarrhea by poison. I think there needs to be a serious search for an academic source to support this list. Pending that, it should be deleted. Dkriegls (talk to me!) 00:15, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
And to take an example from this list: "William Kogut" who "committed suicide with a pipe bomb". Should we include this guy? Or this guy? Or this guy? I could keep going on. I mean the only way we consider William Kogut's death unusual is if we narrow it down to the type of pipe bomb. But I bet you I could find that each one of the suicides used a somewhat unique pipe bomb, given that they were home made. This list just doesn't stand up on it's own with the inclusion criterion of "Did the report use a synonym of unusual". Dkriegls (talk to me!) 00:32, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Obviously its strange because he used "packs of playing cards and the hollow leg from his cot" to make the pipe bomb. That's obviously unusual. Regular pipe bombs aren't unusual at all. Dream Focus 01:09, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
so, per you, it is the bomb that is unusual, not the death. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:34, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Dream Focus, pointing that out suggest to me that you missed the entire point of my post. It only becomes unusual by describing increasingly more detail of the death. It's not enough to say "Suicide by pipe bomb". That isn't unusual. We have to say "Suicide by pipe bomb made of playing cards and hollow leg from his cot" (I bet the explosive chemicals weren't unusual). Well, we could due that for almost any death. I could say "Death by gun at 3 p.m. on Friday the 13th in Malmo Sweden". I bet that has only happened once or twice ever, and would likely get the "unusual" synonym added in the news story. But in the end, it's just a another death by gun. Dkriegls (talk to me!) 05:49, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree with pbp, but since we have the article, we might as well try to improve it. I would favor a more strict method that uses reliable sources. There are undoubtedly multiple books that could be sourced for something like this. Maybe someone should just go to the library and grab some kind of trivia book. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 07:37, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I hate to say it but IMHO this article should get deleted. Even though it has interesting material. Aside from the wiki reasons, questions like this are purely subjective and unresolvable when there is a dispute. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:45, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Require reliable sources. As others have mentioned, Wikipedia policy requires that reliable sources independent of the subject exist to support inclusion of material in the encyclopedia. I have yet to see a compelling argument for the exemption of this article from that policy on the ground that it would make the encyclopedia better. On the contrary, I'd suggest it might even make the encyclopedia worse by opening the gates to a jumble of improperly sourced material included by editor consensus. Items should be included only if a reliable source says the death was unusual, bizarre, strange or in some other way out of the ordinary. --Batard0 (talk) 03:48, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Require reliable sources per WP:V and WP:NOR. I do not agree that it would be appropriate to invoke WP:IAR here. We should require a very good reason to set aside two of our core policies, and I do not see how this would improve the encyclopaedia. This is a list involving a vague and subjective criterion. Deciding ourselves whether a death is "unusual" is a recipe for endless and unresolvable arguments, when we could be doing more useful things. Much better to leave it to reliable sources to decide. Neljack (talk) 03:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Consensus If there's a dispute about an entry then it seems obvious that this will be resolved by the consensus of a discussion on the talk page, just as we are doing here. If the consensus of such a discussion is that an entry qualifies then that's that. Of course, editors will tend to refer to reliable sources in making their determination but the details depend upon the particulars of each case and there's no exact formula for this. Warden (talk) 09:13, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_unusual_deaths/Archive_10&oldid=1133837223"