Talk:Floyd Collins

78-rpm Record: The Death of Floyd Collins
There is a record with the title "The Death of Floyd Collins" that was recorded soon after Floyd Collins death. It is reported that this was the FIRST record to ever sell one million (1,000,000) copies. Quite a trivia question to which very few people would ever guess the answer!

Collectors of cave memoribilia still find copies of this record for sale in used record stores and on-line sites.

Larry E. Matthews (talk) 21:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Requested move
Floyd Collins does not need a disambiguation between him and the musical about him. His article should be titled Floyd Collins as it was until recently. The musical is handled at the top of the article itself. WTucker (talk) 01:28, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, this article should be named simply "Floyd Collins"; moving it to "Floyd Collins (person)" was the wrong approach. At the top it would need "", which expands to  The Floyd Collins (disambiguation) page would look like:
 * Floyd Collins may refer to:
 * Floyd Collins (1887-1925), cave explorer who died after being trapped underground
 * Floyd Collins (film) (once there is one)
 * Floyd Collins (musical)
 * etc.
 * --CliffC (talk) 02:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the move. I'll set up the dabs as suggested above right now.  --CliffC (talk) 03:43, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it is done. What do you have in mind?  WTucker (talk) 03:50, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Your suggestion of otheruses does make more sense. I think we're done now that the Floyd Collins (person) pages have been speedied.  Cheers, CliffC (talk) 04:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

How on earth? (And; Floyd's Tomb!)
How was it legal for someone to buy the land of the previous occupants whos son died in tragic circumstances then DIG HIM UP and use him as a tourist attraction? How can a national park body also be involved in that? How can the family 'protest' yet be left helpless while their dead kid is a fucking theme park manniquin? If this were in some third world nation run by warlords I'd understand, but this is in a first world country with a legal system, why were no legal remedies made available to the family and why did no law society or at least some lawyer with a soul (I know in the US your lawyers are different to us lawyers in the rest of the world where the highest attainable professional degree is a law degree and it isn't handed out with breakfast cereals.) and sort the matter out for them?

There HAS to be more details to it than that, it just isn't possible to buy someone's land and thusly assume ownership of the corpse of the previous occupants dead child. That's illegal and has been illegal from time immemorial as interference with a corpse (We're talking pre-Blackburn era common law stuff here!) so surely there's something missing from the article that would explain this. They must have legally agreed to it in contract somehow when selling the property?! And thus they were bound to it? That's the ONLY possible legal reason I could foresee this even being possible, but please, can anyone with history on this expand on it a bit for us?

Also, it's probably worth noting Floyd's Tomb by now, it's been around for a dozen years and is one of the worlds first creepypastas in his honor. ;) BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 08:03, 27 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Oh boy, aren't you in for a treat JesusPiece (talk) 03:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the Internet Historian documentary
To everyone removing mentions of the recent YouTube documentary: Stop, please?

This is by far the most attention this caver and his fate has received since 1979 when Roger Brucker's Trapped! was published. It is a comprehensive and feature-length account of his death that has generated nearly 7 million viewings, yet a brief reference to its existence is being treated as vandalistic and unnoteworthy. Specifically, by Wikipedians like @RteeeeKed and then needlessly semi-protected by @Anachronist. Wikipedia recognizes popular web content about specific topics like this as generally notable. Our job is to remove vandalism, not context.

If you're confused, I encourage you to refresh yourself with Wikipedia's policy on content removal and web content notability WP:WEB and then reassess this exclusion and possibly others you may have made in the past. In short, removing references to content that has influenced the revisitation of incredibly niche history by literally millions of people is overzealous, obnoxious, and unhelpful. Knock it off. 2600:8800:118:6D00:9144:E3B6:C399:CEA9 (talk) 03:25, 14 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Decided to take a better look at our pop-culture policy at WP:IPCEXAMPLES. To quote it:
 * "When trying to decide if a pop culture reference is appropriate to an article, ask yourself the following:
 * Has the subject (if a person or organization) acknowledged the existence of the reference?
 * Have multiple reliable sources pointed out the reference?
 * Did any real-world event occur because of the cultural element covered by the reference?
 * Did the referencing material significantly depend on the specific subject? For example, if the reference is to a specific model of car, did the material use that model car for some reason, or was it just a case of "use a well-known name of a car"?
 * If you cannot answer "yes" to at least one of these, you are probably just adding trivia. Get three or more, and you are probably adding genuinely encyclopedic content."
 * I'm gonna break these down.
 * Floyd's dead, this doesn't apply.
 * Using the search engine test for IH's video doesn't bring up any reliable sources.
 * Again with the search engine test, no real-world event happened because of IH's video.
 * I will admit here, the answer to this is yes, and overwhelmingly so. The entire hour-long video is about Floyd. However, most of these questions are a no.
 * In other words, this video isn't notable. If I'm wrong here though, please message me back. RteeeeKed 💬📖 19:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Admittedly I hadn't asked those questions before starting this discussion. But I felt that the fact it covered a pretty niche historical event and relied entirely on its details absolutely justified its mention. Especially considering the amount of attention it reinvigorated in a mostly unknown event as well as spelunking more generally.
 * From the same "In popular culture" policy: "The importance of the works it may be reasonable to mention in a pop-culture section should rise commensurately with the level of notability of the subject of the article in which the section appears. A nonfiction best-seller, or film that won major awards, about a historical figure is more likely to be encyclopedically relevant than a special issue of a magazine, or a one-hour TV documentary." I would hazard a guess and say that Floyd and his death were not so notable that a very popular documentary about it wouldn't qualify as "encyclopedically relevant". This isn't an article about a nation or big war, it's an article about a single man best known for his death. What other reason would a popular modern work specifically and only about his death not qualify?
 * Brief mentions of popular content surrounding Floyd Collins do not significantly extend his already succinct article. In previous edits, less notable mentions of Floyd were referenced in the pop culture section, including singular mentions in House of Leaves and The Blacklist. I posit that these are far better examples of tidbits of trivia that don't meet our standards of encyclopedic relevancy. But a new and freely available documentary specifically about his death? Based on a book by famed caver Roger Brucker who explored the very cave Floyd died in? I think that might be a step too far.
 * Lastly, this wouldn't be the first time a popular online documentary has been worth mentioning in the article of a real-world event. Like LEMMINO's mention in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article and even the same documentarian Internet Historian's mention in the article about the Costa Concordia disaster. All despite the fact that these instances not only meet exactly the same if not less criteria as 'Man in Cave', but also detail events that are wildly more notable than Floyd Collins ever was in the last half-century (at least prior to IH's video).
 * I'm sorry if I was blunt earlier, I don't think anyone is wrong or right and that this might be more subjective than we'd all like. I just invite everyone to reconsider the importance of famous retellings of really unusual history before we start superfluous edit wars. 2600:8800:118:6D00:9144:E3B6:C399:CEA9 (talk) 20:47, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I protected the article because an administrator's job is to ensure stability of the Wikipedia project, and this article did not appear to be stable.
 * Looking at the content of the bits that keep being added and removed, my impression is this: It's hard to grasp that the YouTube video is a "famous retelling" without being covered by published reliable sources. I see no evidence that Trapped! is notable, that the Internet Historian channel is notable, or even that Roger Brucker is notable. We certainly don't have articles on any of those topics. The number of views something gets is irrelevant, and not a consideration for inclusion here. We generally don't cite blogs for similar reasons, no matter how popular they are.
 * I'd say this video could be included in the "External links" section but there is no need to mention it in the prose; it isn't a relevant factoid for a reader of this article.
 * That's my view. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:00, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I understand the responsibility and apologise for alleging the protection was needless, you're right. The article was unstable and needed protection.
 * "We certainly don't have articles on any of those topics." This just isn't true, and we certainly do. Roger Brucker has his own article which mentions Trapped! and the media it influenced. I recognise that the book doesn't have its own article nor does Internet Historian. But that's not because nothing they've done or inspired is notable, but because not everyone who does something notable gets their own article. If we start removing every mention of someone's highly related works simply because they aren't significant enough to justify their own entry, Wikipedia would be a much smaller and less informative place. 2600:8800:118:6D00:9144:E3B6:C399:CEA9 (talk) 21:19, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Adding things without notable sources and removing things with notable sources are two entirely separate things. The difference between Trapped! and Man in Cave is that Man in Cave hasn't been covered by any major secondary sources, and Trapped! has. RteeeeKed 💬📖 21:54, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. Strangely, when I searched Wikipedia for any of those topics I found nothing. I must have spelled "Brucker" wrong. Fine, if Brucker is notable and Trapped! is a notable book, then mention them. The YouTube video? Not in prose. It is not helpful simply to state that there's a YouTube video related to the topic. There are YouTube videos related to any topic. As I said, it's best as an external link. ~Anachronist (talk) 00:31, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
 * If the bare minimum requirement for such a references inclusion in prose is for the content to have been mentioned by a major secondary source, then I stand corrected as well. I was led to believe through a few years of contributing, and other articles (like the ones I linked earlier) that the "in pop media" and "pop culture" sections served as welcome indices for content that could help readers learn more about the topic a given article. Whether such content was made with entertainment in mind or had received explicit media attention.
 * I appreciate everyone's involvement in this discussion and am sorry for the unfair criticism I levied. Thanks for clearing it up. 2600:8800:118:6D00:69C6:E175:3D04:61D8 (talk) 07:42, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't have too strong of an opinion on whether or not the video should be included (but I do lean towards no!), but if it is included I feel like it ought to be mentioned that some parts of the video are very inaccurate to the actual events. Hell, I would argue that the video does not qualify as a documentary.--ACourier (talk) 08:30, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Could you elaborate on that? 2600:8801:710D:EA00:C16F:8178:3F50:287 (talk) 00:34, 8 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Given the this "documentary" was nearly stolen word-for-word from a Mental Floss article, this complaint aged like milk. 2601:143:C500:1B10:55A2:8114:6BCB:7955 (talk) 21:55, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It wasn't just stolen word for word, many facts of the incident were rewritten as easily disprovable falsehoods at best, and published libel at the norm. It goes against well established factors in the event, and even goes as far as ignoring the geography of the entire region, decontextualizing it to claim that two entirely different cave systems were in fact the same one. It's a sensational hit-piece on the family of Floyd Collins on par with the American Legion magazine slander of the family back in the late 1960s, however far more damaging due to it's much broader reach. CDPorter (talk) 05:02, 23 May 2024 (UTC)