Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Svidersky (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was keep. Please defer merge related comments to article talk. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Anna Svidersky

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Wikipedia is not a memorial. Anna is not particularly notable other than by her death, which caused a short term media spike, but we focus too much on recentism as it is. Note that we lack articles on e.g. the murder or the murderer itself. This article is a Coatrack article in that it focuses mostly on the murder, and 'hangs' this on an article purporting to be about Anna (and also on her myspace account, for some reason). All in all, not encyclopedic.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  19:16, 7 August 2007 (UTC) (if kept, rename per the below; the article isn't really about her, but about the murder and the so-called sickness which gets a whopping two google hits).  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  07:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 *  Earlier debate resulted in no consensus here.


 * Delete - I was involved with this article as a GA reviewer back in Sept 2006 and I had concerns then about the line the article was straddling between being a biography/memorial and an article covering the internet phenomenon/"My space event" after her death. It was my opinion then and still now that the article is crossing the memorial line. When the last AfD established that the only notability of this article was the unique aftermath of her death then I felt the article's primary focus should be this aftermath with reliable sources commenting on the factors and significances of the event. I was disappointed that the article invested so much focus on details like her donating her hair for charity or her mother's quote about her killer. After more research I found that there simply was not that much coverage from reliable third party sources on the relevance and notability of the internet phenomenon and in a little more then a year times the event has already started to fade from significance. I think the event does merits a paragraph worth of information in the Myspace article and that is about it. It certainly doesn't pass the bar for a biography and there are simply not enough sources or information for an article about the internet phenomenon by itself.AgneCheese/Wine 19:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Since writing this you have merged parts of the article into Mourning sickness and in a post below have advocated "Delete and redirect", which isn't actually an option. For GFDL reasons, it needs to be "Merge and redirect". Tyrenius 19:04, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep This was discussed at length at the previous AfD that resulted in a Keep, as well as on the Talk page. The notable element in the article is the so-called (and reliably sourced) 'mourning sickness' phenomenon, where thousands of strangers around the world went into mourning over someone they didn't know, simply because of the communication power of the Internet. We are not aware of any comparable event before or since, and it is properly sourced. So we have both notablity and reliable sourcing, all that's needed for a WP article. Crum375 19:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I note, however, that we do not have an article on mourning after sickness, and neither does it google. Perhaps this is not such a notable or verifiable phenomenon after all?  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  07:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Er, I think we need to look up "mourning sickness". Tyrenius 07:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, so how about we rename this article to Mourning sickness and focus on that?  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  09:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be a valid, but entirely different article. This one is about a particular incident which has other significance also, as in the role of the internet and youth culture, which are not intrinsic to "mourning sickness" per se. You might like to discuss the name on the article talk page. Tyrenius 09:49, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Maybe if we changed the title to "Anna Svidersky murder" or "mourning after sickness." There seems to be a bit of notability here, over and above the day-to-day murder. It's a close call, I'll admit. Realkyhick 20:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * (e/c) Weak keep per Crum375 -- there aren't that many reliable sources, but there are some. Agne27's arguments are also pretty convincing, so I'm not fully swayed to keep. Does seem to surpass the "notable for one thing" bar, if barely. Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 20:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Mourning sickness, which is what this page is really about. Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 10:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Very weak keep. I'd support a move to "Anna Svidersky murder" or similar - she's not notable, only her death/murder and the surrounding hype are because we do have some reliable sources. I can't think of anywhere that would be appropriate for a merge, and wiki is not paper, so I see no pressing need to delete, but generally biographies of persons notable only for one event are to be avoided, so I think the move is imperative (see Disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the AFD that suggested a move from Madeleine McCann, a non-notable child in herself, but the subject of a notable disappearance. Still, Wikipedia is not news either, so we should avoid the hype of missing white woman syndrome in these types of articles related to murders, disappearances and similar.)-h i s  s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 20:24, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep It is not the fact that she was murdered that is notable, but the fact that that became an internet phenomenon generating 3,000,000 hits to date on one youtube video alone and total of 7,000,000 hits on related videos according to one figure. This phenomenon was reported internationally at the time, specifically in The Guardian (UK),, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the New York Times. Other coverage included local press and the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, England. In April this year Svidersky was referred to in a speech by Washington Governor Gregoire. In July the murder was cited with reference to another murder case by The Columbian. Thus the incident has achieved notability which is always linked to the name of Anna Svidersky, bestowing notability on her in the process as the victim. The article which covers all this takes the principle of least surprise by simply using her name as the title. It is what anyone wishing to read about the subject would most obviously search for.  There seems to be some, to my mind, rigid thinking to quibble with this, and likewise with the claim that the rest of her life wasn't notable.  That is of course true, but again by association and media coverage, those aspects of her life are now in the public domain.  The article was written per NPOV and therefore follows sources.  If the sources have seen fit to mention aspects of her background it would be POV editing to exclude these on the grounds that they are "sentimental".  That is an irrelevant consideration and there is no wiki guideline that says otherwise.  The same applies to the accusation that this is a memorial page. It is not. It is an article written as any other, applying Wikipedia policies to do so. If this takes on any semblance of a memorial page, then that is an accidental and inevitable byproduct, when an article is written which concerns a dead person.  The editing policy is simply to provide relevant information that a reader is likely to require.  As the origin of the phenomenon and subsequent media coverage is her myspace page, it would be perverse if this were not in the article, thus forcing the reader to access it directly to gain an idea of what it contained.  Wikipedia articles should be self-contained and cover aspects of the subject to inform the reader. Tyrenius 21:44, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep When an article is notable and verifiable and not original research and written with reliable sources and someone still invokes "unencyclopedic" as the reason to delete, how do we possibly dispel that bogeyman other than to say, this is encyclopedic. If it's too much of a memorial, if it needs a rename then thrash it out on the talk page.  But the level of sourcing makes it abundantly clear that this article is valid per our standards.  Don't buy the rationale that it's about "mourning sickness"?  Well, sorry, the sources in the article already made the call.  And so what the nomination really comes down to is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. --JayHenry 01:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Merge I have to agree with Agne27, the article reads as a memorial to a person who was otherwise not notable. I disagree that the memorial tone is an inevitable byproduct.  Facts like her donating her hair and giving money to a particular charity are not really relevant from an encyclopedic point of view  The response to the death, is and should be noted either by renaming the article (and stripping out the parts that make the article a memorial), or merging information about the "mourning sickness" to an article dealing with internet phenomena.   The Bethling (Talk) 01:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Your argument is for "Move" or "Merge", not "Delete". Tyrenius 00:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. It is well referenced. Change the name to "Murder of ..." if there is consensus on the talk page. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 01:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I grieve for the loss to the world of this young person, slain by a psycho a week before her 18th birthday. Had she lived another 60 years or so, who knows what good she might have done? But I cannot find that the article is more than a memorial, and per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not a memorial. God bless her and grant her eternal peace. Edison 02:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep shows a unique modern response to grieving in the information age. Jmm6f488 01:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOT.  Almost every murder in a country with relatively low crime rate will receive lots of attention, but that does not mean it should be mentioned here.  There is no historic notability in this case Corpx 03:39, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * In 2005, there were 16,692 murders in the US. How many of those received international media coverage,and of those that did, how many not just for the murder itself, but for also creating an unprecedented worldwide phenomenon? Tyrenius 02:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:N. Notability is established by "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", and that clearly exists here. Even though it appears that the only reason she is notable is because of the internet response to her death, she is nonetheless notable. In addition, the WP:BIO guideline gives another criterion for notablity: "The person has demonstrable wide name recognition"; and this is the case with Anna. DHowell 04:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete (i) This article is about the public reaction to the murder, not the victim of the murder. (iii) The phenomenon of 'mourning sickness' (which is only another way of describing mass grief) may be a fit subject for a article, but until it is created, this page cannot and should not serve as a substitute.--Greatest hits 05:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Mourning sickness now exists with parts of the article copied to it. Presumably you would advocate "Merge and redirect"? Tyrenius 19:08, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment to the closing admin It appears that even the majority of "Keep sentiments" have noted that it is the reaction to Anna's death that is notable and not the individual herself or even her murder. It appears then that the purpose of this article is not to serve as a biography or a detailed account of her murder but rather to try and act as a encyclopedic entry on the phenomenon that happened following her death. To better serve that angle and respect the content that the "Keep" voters wish to retain I have started the Mourning sickness article and include a section about Anna Svidersky. While it is certainly a work in progress, I believe this article can be more sharply focus on the encyclopedic content and notability of the event without being overburden with the trivial details about cutting her hair and donating to charity and overall memorial language that the Anna Svidersky article has. I feel the best approach then is to Delete with redirect and have Anna Svidersky point to the subsection within the Mourning Sickness article about the reaction to her death. As the above sentiments (both Keep and Delete) note, she is not notable and therefore we do not need a complete biography article on her.AgneCheese/Wine 08:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good possibility, or a shortened Anna article that focuses more on the post-death phenomenon, and largely gets rid of the part about donated hair and such. Plenty of reliable sources here, too. I'm good with it either way. The new article looks good so far. Realkyhick 08:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback! I was thinking about the shorten Anna article when I was working on Mourning sickness but it looks to me like if you removed all the relevant and encyclopedic content from the article, there really is not much left. The actual crime of her murder doesn't distinguish it from any other unfortunate death. Even as the first AfD concluded, it really is all about the reaction and aftermath. I do think we can include all the essential and important details in the Anna Svidersky section of Mourning Sickness and I'd like to invite the participants here to the Talk:Mourning sickness page to hammer out the details of the sections. I think the main consideration left for this AfD will be if the bare bones biography and details or Anna's death (apart from the reaction) is notable enough to merit its own separate and distinct article apart from the Mourning sickness detailing the reaction to her death. That considerations leads into where the "Anna Svidersky" redirect would better serve. I think it would be of most use to the reader as a redirect to subsection of Mourning Sickness. AgneCheese/Wine 09:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * As Tyrenius noted above, this article is about more than just 'mourning sickness'. It is about a unique event in history, never seen before or after, where a specific young individual died and evoked widespread emotions of grief, by thousands of other young people, worldwide, who had not known that person before. Yes, it has been tied to the concept of 'mourning sickness' as an explanation, but that does not make it one of many, as there are none others to compare to. The only close example of the mass widespread grief cited by the press is Princess Diana, and that of course is different as the vast majority of the mourners there had heard of Diana before, so this case is even more unique. Given the the high name recognition of Anna on the Internet (26,600 g-hits), the incomparably high number of hits on the various you-tube, MySpace and other memorials (over 3,000,000), and the relevant supporting reliable sources on mainstream press, there is no reason not to have an article in her own name – this is what Wikipedia is about. Crum375 15:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of reasons why Wikipedia does not need a memorial article. The Mourning sickness article can aptly cover the phenomenon that was never seen before just as the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann covers the details of the Madeleine McCann event, the Murder of Sarah Payne covers the events and reaction to Sarah Payne's death, and the Soham murders covers those high profile murders. The most prudent reasons for not having separate articles on victims is that they do tend to become memorials as the Anna Svidersky article has become a case in point for. It's almost a natural course whenever you have individuals who are not notable themselves to warrant a biography to then "fill up space" with non-encyclopedic and trivial details that turn the article into a tribute rather than a biography. While the sentiment is nice, it doesn't benefit Wikipedia or the reader. If the notability is plainly tied into the reaction to her death as the first AfD and both the keep and delete sentiments in this AfD have clearly established then THAT is the sole content that should be kept. The subsection on the Mourning sickness article can aptly cover that reaction in a more encyclopedic tone then a memorial article ever would.AgneCheese/Wine 18:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * We all agree, I think, that WP does not need a memorial article. And this article is not a memorial. It is about a person who became very famous as a result of her death, because she was the only one in history to have caused mass grieving by thousands of strangers around the world based on the Internet communication technology. 26,600 g-hits tell you her name is well known – I suspect much more so than many people for whom we have bio articles. That she became famous as a result of her untimely death does not mean that we can't have an article describing her life. Her life and death, as well as the unique, unprecedented and since unequaled response of the Internet community to her death, are well documented by reliable mainstream sources. This fulfills all requirements for a WP article. Denying this would be to ignore well documented facts and our own inclusion rules. Crum375 22:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The "mourning sickness" effect is only one aspect of this. The effect of the internet, the nature of myspace and teen culture are equally important. Cumulatively they have given notability to the murder victim. What might normally be trivial has in this case gained significance through media coverage. To arbitrarily veto such information is what is not encyclopedic. In this case it is essential to the completeness of the article to include details of Svidersky's life published in the media and available online, as this was the information available to those who then participated in this global reaction. If the reader is to gain an insight into what prompted the reaction, then they need to know the information that was available to the "mourners".  That information has been included; the reaction to the death has been stated; it should be pointed out that no editorial deduction has been made as to the precise connection between the two things.  That is left up to the reader to decide.  However, if certain biographical details are objected to in the article, that is a matter for editorial discussion, not a reason to delete the whole article. I find these "murder of..." titles somewhat pedantic and artificial, counter-intuitive, arrived at by wikilegalese and precipitating a contrived introduction as a result: Murder of Sarah Payne being a case in point. It is an unfortunate recent development in naming and should be discouraged. It is instructive to search google for "Sarah Payne" (68,300), "Murder of Sarah Payne" (2,160), or even "Sarah Payne" + "murder" (23,600).  The great majority of such murder articles are simply titled with the name of the victim (or the perpetrator), as in Kenneth Bigley.  I would not have thought it needed pointing out that most murder victims are only notable because of their murder, and otherwise would have remained unknown. Tyrenius 00:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The background section of this article reads lie a memorial.  Compare it to another person who became famous through his death, Matthew Sheppard.   We don't see information about whether he volunteered at soup kitchens, or got detention one day in school.  With the exception of the one quote from family, it's encyclopedic biographical information.  Simply because a reliable source mentions something in an attempt to emotionally connect with readers doesn't mean that it belongs in an article.   The fact that she's somewhat well known doesn't mean that she necessarily deserves an article of her own either.    Jessica Lunsford was a very high profile murder victim, with over 500,000 g-hits, and yet because outside of her murder she isn't notable her entry is a redirect to her murderer, John Couey.     As I said in my original comment, the reaction is the thing that's notable, and I really think that since there's now an article about "mourning sickness" that's really the place where it belongs.     The Bethling (Talk) 00:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Bethling, I think you may be missing an important point by making the comparison to Matthew Sheppard, which relates to the uniqueness and notability of this article. In your Sheppard example, that person was brutally murdered, and that brutality alone caused an uproar. But the issue here is different – we have a person who was brutally murdered who was part of the online community via MySpace, and whose life details were supplied by her MySpace page and online media articles soon after her death. The mass grieving which then ensued via the various Internet channels occurred after these personal life details became available to the online community. The point here is that the 'grieving by strangers' effect was related to the information that they received online about the subject's life prior to her death, and thus that 'stranger' became more familiar to them. We don't know as Wikipedia editors how much impact the personal life details actually had on the grieving by the thousands of strangers worldwide, but we do know that it was made available to them by her MySpace page and the media, and a reasonable person could conclude that there was a causal relationship. In any case, we supply that well sourced information to allow the readers to reach their own conclusions. Excluding that information would be un-encyclopedic and would prevent them from seeing the full, well sourced picture, and quite possibly the main reason for the unprecedented mass grieving effect. Crum375 01:26, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't really see any evidence that this type of information being available is why her death struck a chord with so many people, rather than the fact that she was simply a young woman just shy of her eighteenth birthday struck down in a really tragic circumstance (which is how the page was first shown to me by a friend).  The inference that release of the information about her and the reaction she received have a causal relationship is OR.     The Bethling (Talk) 20:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The reader is free to infer what they will. We should not imply something that is not in the sources, and, as far as I can see this has not been done. The Guardian certainly brings in background information available on the internet as a prominent feature:
 * Alex agrees with this idea of a phoney connection, likening the interest in Anna to the way people "grieve" over celebrities because they "think they know the person". But by visiting Anna's page, he says, "you could find out nearly everything about her". Indeed, reading Anna's page seems to show her life exactly as it was up to the moment she died ... it is still full of risque comments and goofy phrases. Instead of assurances from heartbroken family members that the victim was a sweet young girl who would "do anything for anyone", we find a portrait in which Anna boasts of being "legal in six days" and chooses as a theme song a coarse little number by the band Hollywood Undead. But being able to pore over the details of Anna's life is not without an element of creepiness. People who have never met Anna have posted tributes to her as emotional as those of Anna's closest friends.
 * The newspaper does not make an explicit conclusion on this. The article follows the source, providing the information, but not making an explicit conclusion. Tyrenius 21:04, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment. WP:NOT a memorial has been cited in this discussion. The relevant policy passage reads:
 * Wikipedia is not the place to honor departed friends and relatives. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must be notable besides being fondly remembered.

I might mention that the current article is the work of wiki editors who have no connection with the subject. Any attempts to include personal tributes have been reverted. Tyrenius 00:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Change Keep to Delete Since Agne created the Mourning sickness article I see no need to keep this article since her article includes Anna Svidersky. Jmm6f488 01:55, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That needs to be "Merge" then, in order to preserve GFDL, as parts of the article have been copied to Mourning sickness. Also presumably a redirect would be helpful. Tyrenius 06:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 'Anna Svidersky' gets 2.5 times more g-hits than 'Mourning Sickness', and the current Wikipedia Mourning sickness article is essentially built around 'Anna Svidersky'. That's not a logical or reasonable arrangement – clearly 'Anna Svidersky' is significantly more notable, plus this article is about much more than just the 'Mourning Sickness' itself, but about a specific notable case, where among other things, 'Mourning Sickness' was cited by the press. Crum375 02:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep or Merge  while this is a sad and tragic story it touched chords and should be respected. I think the article should be kept as is. Modernist 13:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep looks notable and covered by major newspapers. No merge is necessary, WP is not paper.  Grue   17:09, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.