User talk:Unschool/The "Recent Death" Tag

Comments

Death generates interest, and thus editors start editing the article, adding information, both about the circumstances of his or her death, but also changing information about the person's biography. To answer your first question, it isn't that rare. If you look at the history of the Teoctist Arăpaşu article, you will notice that even his death, of natural causes, generated a spree of edits on the circumstances of his death.

To your second question, I don't know how it improves the article, if it does so or if it is even supposed to. But it certainly is a warning to the reader that the article is undergoing changes. Whether the reader comes back to the page or not is not very important, but it's good to know that you're reading some work in progress.

To your third question, experience has shown that edits of the article on a recently deceased person do center to the circumstances of his or her death, but are not limited to that. Actually, there are articles, such as Octavian Paler, that never existed during that person's life, but came up only immediately after his death. Anyway, the template is not to be kept forever, but only shortly after the death, thus, after the template's removal, when the article's form has stabilized, information on the recent event will not be pointed out, but will be a part of the article.

To your fourth question, I take it that you have the same objection towards Template:Current ? And don't call your possible responder "my friend", because it might read like an irony.

To your fifth question, actually, no, information does not change that rapidly in an article on a living person. See what I said before, about articles not even existing during that person's lifetime. It's enough to check the article's history to see that.

To your last question, as per Template talk:Recent death, the tag should stay as long as edits generated by the event are under way. It may be a couple of days for some persons, but for others it could be weeks or even months. Anyway, go to the template's talk page for any questions or objections that you may have on its use. - Andrei 10:39, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Response

Andrei, thanks for your comments. My responses:

Death generates interest, and thus editors start editing the article, adding information, both about the circumstances of his or her death, but also changing information about the person's biography. I am fairly familiar with the rationale behind the RDT, but I submit that it is not being applied with as much thought as you have apparently given it. I removed perhaps a dozen or so RDTs yesterday, most of which were on articles that had seen no editing since their subject's death with the exception of placing verbs in the past tense and placement of the RDT. For example, Mr. Mosca here had someone who was courteous enough to note his death, changed "works" to "worked", and placed the RDT. Nothing else has changed, and he has now been gone for over a week! I don't think we are in any danger of misleading anyone by removing his RDT. Yet I was reverted. Some people do place tags with good reasons in mind, there's no doubt about that. But I also believe that there are people on this project (though I don't think that the gentleman who reverted me is one of them) who are tag-happy, who may or may not have anything of substance to add to an article, but who love the fact that when they place a tag on an article that it goes on the top and they feel like everyone can see what they did. (Reminds me of something that Dr. Spock taught me when I read Baby and Child Care back in the mid-1960s, but it's probably in bad taste to point it out here.) Anyway, in my opinion, Wikipedia has become polluted with tags. I used to be opposed to all of them, but some thoughtful editors have persuaded me that some of them do have reason to exist.

If you look at the history of the Teoctist Arăpaşu article, you will notice that even his death, of natural causes, generated a spree of edits on the circumstances of his death. I count 64 edits on the Patriarch between his death on July 30 and my removal of the tag on August 4. Of those, only four actually dealt with his death (and none after July 31!) and another 8 may be said to have anything at all with the content of "the . . . surrounding events",(I am not including corrections of typos).

1. This edit was the first to actually note his death.
2. This edit noted that the death was heart-related, and mentioned the weather.
3. This edit mentioned that he had just had prostate surgery, and the hospital where it took place.
4. Here the Recent Death Tag was added.
5. Here, on July 31, we got some real details on his death the day before
6. Funeral arrangements are mentioned here.
7. A picture of the Patriarch lying in state is added here. A nice touch to the article, but not one without which the reader would be "uninformed".
8. Some new wording was added here, simply because the original contributor may not have been a native English speaker. Not really significant; not sure why I included it in this list.
9. This tells us who picked his burial site.
10. This tells us who officiated at the ceremony
11. Several pictures of the funeral are added
12. And here we learn that he was buried with state honors and that 8000 people came to pay their respects.

Okay, so as far as I can tell, nothing regarding the "circumstances of the person's death" changed after the day after he died. He died the 30th, we got the details on the 31st. I think that that's actually pretty typical. All this other stuff, like adding pictures and telling us where he was buried and how many people attended—we know that that information is going to change, I mean, everybody knows that you don't know until after the funeral how many people will attend. The tag serves no purpose at this point. I still feel that a Recent Death Tag becomes the glaring highlight on the article, distracting from the information within.

Experience has shown that edits of the article on a recently deceased person do center to the circumstances of his or her death, but are not limited to that. This is absolutely true. But the wording of the tag has nothing to do with this. If the article is changing rapidly, is that a problem? It's sad that someone's article may not be created until after their death, but at least it's being created. If the concern is vandalism (particularly with the deaths of the very famous), then the tag should address that concern, instead of "warning" us that we (gasp) might learn more facts about their death. As I said in my essay, Wikipedia is hardly the place people come for "updates" on the deaths of the rich and famous.

The template is not to be kept forever, but only shortly after the death I think everyone agrees with this. But how long is that? That wrestler dude who killed himself and his wife and kid, now in that case we had significant new information coming out for a few days, which is much longer than normal. But even in that case, after a week, there was nothing new. I don't know how long the RDT should be left on, but a good guideline was suggested to me by User:Rklawton, who said, "Personally, I think the tag can go away when edit rates return to following pre-death trends." For me, that would be an absolute maximum length I'd want the tag to stay on there.

Don't call your possible responder "my friend" You're totally correct. That sounded like a smart-ass comment. I've made the change.

Information does not change that rapidly in an article on a living person. With all due respect, Andrei, I disagree. It's true that for most people, death causes a temporary surge in edits. But so do . . . indictments, engagements, criminal convictions, arrests, winning an election, losing an election, giving birth, in short, news. And the rate of edits is less tied into the death itself than the height of the person's celebrity (which is why you have articles like Mr. Mosca's, which basically are not touched at all).

I take it that you have the same objection towards Template:Current? Well, only in the sense that I think both are overused, and the tags that have springboarded from the CE tag are sometimes ridiculous. I remember seeing a current-events spin-off tag on a "current spaceflight" on the article on the Space Shuttle. Here it is. Now c'mon! Is this an encyclopedia or a newspaper? If we can have this, shouldn't we have a tag which says, "This article is about a currently pregnant celebrity. Information may change as the gestation progresses." I mean, why not? This is what I mean when I say that Wikipedia has become polluted with tags. If I had invented the original tag (whatever it was), I'm sure I would have been very proud of my innovation. But today, I would consider it a source of embarrassment, as they are being applied with almost no thought being put into their use at all. And I'm not the only one who thinks this way, clearly the creator of the Current Events tag feels the same way.

I don't know how it improves the article, if it does so or if it is even supposed to . . . but it's good to know that you're reading some work in progress. Hmmmmm. Well, I think that if it doesn't improve the article, then it doesn't belong. More to the point, however, as we all know, the entirety of Wikipedia is subject to change. And let me point out something that I doubt most of us have considered: If I'm reading an article on a species of, say, crab, I'm probably not expecting anything to change "dramatically". And yet it may. If I'm reading about the recently-in-the-news-recently-deceased former Prime Minister of Britain, then I'm expecting change on this encyclopedia that "anyone can edit". I'd have to be an idiot not to. So where is the warning really needed?

I just believe that we've started a bandwagon and many people have jumped on without a whole lot of thought. You appear to be more thoughtful than most; I've appreciated the exchange. Unschool 23:09, 5 August 2007 (UTC)