Talk:List of unidentified decedents in the United States

We can't know they're "African American"
I have gone through the article, and in every instance where a victim is described as "African-American," I have changed it to some statement involving the phrase "of African heritage." If we don't know who they are, it makes no sense to describe them as "African-American." How can we know that. We can--maybe--say that they are of sub-Saharan African descent, although even that's not certain; they could have their origins in certain island areas of the Pacific. OK, that's very unlikely. But even then, how do we know they're Americans? They could be Afro-Europeans; they could be Caribbean nationals of African heritage. Hey! They could even be AFRICAN!

I once read of a reporter reporting on some unrest of some sort in France; there was a racial component to whatever the issue was. The reporter told us that "African-Americans" were demonstrating. Of course, that's absurd. Uporządnicki (talk) 20:34, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Laundry Lady
Redirects here. But there is no mention. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:26, 26 November 2016 (UTC).


 * She was identified earlier this year. There wasn't enough information (including what her name was) to merge into her own article.--  Gourami Watcher Talk 04:54, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hm. This poses some interesting issues.  Do these people cease to be encyclopaedic once we know more about them?  I don't think so.  (They may, of course, not be Wiki-notable either before or after.)  Maybe we should have a section or article for them?  If so naming is tricky.  (If not the redirects should be deleted.)
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:46, 27 November 2016 (UTC).

Cleanup
Here, I've started some cleanup on the article with objectives of regularizing the heading format and ordering State sections by date. I started at the top, and have so far only done sections through Georgia. I thought I would stop here and solicit discussion. One thing which I think ought to be done is to either put Jane/John Doe in the headings into lower case or to eliminate that entirely. I favor eliminating it. Comments? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:44, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

History undeleted
I've undeleted the history after this question about the "Greece John Doe" entry on the miscellaneous village pump, because edits containing merged content should not be deleted. I've redirected the page to unidentified decedent. Graham 87 09:42, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to add any more of these attributions using copied but there are a few others in the page history of List of formerly unidentified decedents (search for "attribution"). Graham 87  10:06, 19 September 2021 (UTC)