Talk:Abba Kyari

Erroneous birth date
On 18 April 2020, acting in good faith, an editor added an erroneous birth date to the article space, claiming Abba Kyari was "born 17 November 1938." Since no source was cited, edit warring ensued. Not until 6 hours, 6 minutes later was it corrected and sourced. In the meantime, this fluctuating discrepancy publicly embarrassed Wikipedia on social media, where it was taken as an affront by many Nigerians to whom our inability to resolve the age at death of a top-level official in their national government seemed disrespectful. The editor (himself Nigerian) has explained that he took the date from The Nation, Nigeria's second-most-read newspaper, which prominently maintained that Abba Kyari "was born on November 17, 1938."

I suspect this may be an instance of citogenesis, a form of circular reporting in which a publication, rushing to cover an important event, mistook Wikipedia's birth date of Abba Kyari (military general) as applying to Abba Kyari (politician) and ran with it without fact-checking, only to have Wikipedia compound the confusion by then perpetuating that mistake. In any case, I implore editors to pay closer attention to Wikipedia's policy of Verifiability and cite whatever sources they are relying on, even if those eventually prove to be wrong. NedFausa (talk) 22:13, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I second this argument, seems that was what caused the confusion, I know of some Nigerians on social media saying Abba Kyari"s page on Wikipedia does seem like his and that it wasn't up to date not knowing they were checking on Abba Kyari (military general) instead of Abba Kyari (politician).Archmedhis (talk) 04:15, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

More confusion
On 19 April 2020, moved page Abba Kyari (politician) to Abba Kyari, explaining in the edit summary: "There's no need for creating TWODABS."

As noted in the preceding section of this talk page, when Chief of Staff Kyari died on 17 April 2020, confusion arose from the presence of two disambiguated but nevertheless similarly named WP:BLPs: Abba Kyari (politician) and Abba Kyari (military general). Now additional confusion has manifested. Various online Nigerian news outlets (and another, Sahara Reporters, based in New York City) today published an opinion piece that makes the following false claim about Abba Kyari. He was not even an entry on Wikipedia in all his years as a highflying technocrat and public servant until the day after his burial.

In fact, President Buhari appointed Abba Kyari as his Chief of Staff on August 27, 2015. Two days later, editor Kunkuru created Wikipedia's biography of Kyari. It's conceivable that this latest misunderstanding stems, at least in part, from our page move on 19 April—the day after Kyari's burial. I'm not suggesting that our page move was ill-timed; I'm merely informing interested editors of this latest, lamentable point of befuddlement. NedFausa (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:37, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Abba-Kyari2.jpg
 * Once this file is deleted, as I assume it will be, we have no fallback. uploaded it to Commons on 18 April 2020, and three minutes later added it to Wikipedia. Before then, this BLP had no photo of Abba Kyari, and no other exists at Commons. Until someone uploads an acceptable image to Commons, we must sadly do without any. NedFausa (talk) 23:43, 20 April 2020 (UTC)