Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of deaths due to COVID-19


 * 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. There is consensus that this is as of now still a manageable list, as long as it remains restricted to notable people. There is no consensus about whether the list should be split (e.g. by country), but that is a discussion better suited to the article talk page.  Sandstein  18:25, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

List of deaths due to COVID-19
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log )

Following this RfC about splitting the list, several editors also made the suggestion of deletion. To quote some (but not all) of the rationales used in the RfC:


 * "The UK's Office for National Statistics reports, Of all death occurrences between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) compared with 13,619 deaths due to pneumonia and 394 deaths due to influenza. Nobody, I assume, is suggesting that we should be setting up List of deaths due to influenza, and yet here we are trying to maintain that a cause of death that is 122 times more common is remarkable enough to be notable and listworthy."


 * "death due to COVID-19 was inherently notable earlier in 2020, it is no longer, just as we do not have lists for deaths from heart disease, cancer, or the flu."


 * "There have been over 220,000 deaths in the United States. I'd think this is no longer as significant as it was when the disease first broke out. In other words, it is too common to be usable as a list. "  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 10:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 11:10, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  11:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of COVID-19-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  11:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete while I am generally against removing information from WP, it takes a huge amount of effort to maintain that list properly, and I feel that the relatively small benefits to our project of it existing and being kept up to date properly don't really justify the enormous energy expenditure by so many great editors. Dr. Vogel (talk) 12:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If the editors feel they're expending too much energy on the list, they could simply stop working on it. This is an odd reason to call for an article's deletion. MAINEiac4434 (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That's because there is no valid reason, the ones who requested AfD just don't want to hear about covid apparently and thus want this article deleted. That's also why they pinged each other to obtain a delete answer. --Pesqara (talk) 23:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I hope that you are willing to either defend or retract that accusation. Kevin McE (talk) 20:33, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep. --Pesqara (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well do so then: what evidence do you have that those who consider the list too long to be useful and therefore has ceased to be useful as a list ""just don't want to hear about covid". Kevin McE (talk) 14:57, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Only the unbelievable shallowness of their arguments. --Pesqara (talk) 16:07, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Arrogant assumption and a total lack of goodwill then. Kevin McE (talk) 20:08, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Pesqara - that's simply not true. I started the RfC about spliting the page, with several editors suggesting deletion as an alternative. After about 3 weeks of the RfC open, I then started this AfD to see if there's a wider community consensus. I "pinged" EVERYONE who took part in the RfC. You comment of "the ones who requested AfD just don't want to hear about covid apparently" is utter rubbish. I suggest that if you think something is amiss here, you get together some solid evidence for an WP:ANI post or shut up.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 13:20, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As it happens, I was pinged after I had already intervened here, having seen the AfD notice atop the page. Deletors apparently had already gathered here instead. I'll just say it's an interesting coincidence. Oh, and "some (but not all) of the rationales" you mentioned are the same "rationale" repeated three times. --Pesqara (talk) 16:07, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That is simply and demonstrably untrue: there is a message from Lugnots on your talk page timestamped c 12 hours before your forst comment here, and timestamped one minute after he posted on my page. Stop telling lies and casting false aspertions about those who contribute in good faith, even if you disagree with them on this one issue.  You owe Lugnuts an apology.  Kevin McE (talk) 20:14, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just hold your breath and see. When the time is right, birds will bite your face --Pesqara (talk) 12:51, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * So your response to having been caught out in telling lies about, and making false accusations against, a volunteer here, who has treated you perfectly fairly, is to quote some facile song. If you had an ounce of integrity or self-respect, you would at least apologise and withdraw from this discussion.  Kevin McE (talk) 13:44, 24 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete As I commented at the RFC, this cause of death is simply too common compared to, say, death from laughter, and not particularly notable, unlike List of assassinations in Africa. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 13:24, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. The absolute embodiment of an indiscriminate list (at least, for those not wiki-old enough to remember List of people by name). As of today there have been 1,340,000 confirmed C19 deaths and the number continues to rise; while it may be a viable category, as a hand-maintained (or even Wikidata-generated) list this is as nonsensical as List of people who have visited France. &#8209; Iridescent 13:28, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Have you wondered why there are only a few hundred individuals listed out of those 1,340,000, if this is a "indiscriminate" list? --Pesqara (talk) 23:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The list is large, but it is not indiscriminate. It has a specific criteria for inclusion, and it is timebound. It's unclear why the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths is relevant here - this is a list of deaths of people who have wikipedia articles, which will always be a tiny fraction of the number of total deaths. GabrielF (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. It seems that the people who follow that questionable rationale think that this is a list of people notable for dying of covid rather than a list of notable people who died of covid. --Pesqara (talk) 22:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Please do not make ignorant assumptions about what I, or anyone else, might think. If you have a sensible reason to support your opinion, present that without derogatory comments on the opinions of others. Kevin McE (talk) 20:33, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I did, below. --Pesqara (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, you absolutely did not do so witout being derogatory. Kevin McE (talk) 14:57, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep/Split The comparison to pneumonia or influenza is flawed. SARS COV2 is a novel disease and this pandemic will last a finite amount of time. It is also an event of great historical significance. Influenza is a type of disease caused by a family of viruses that has been with us for thousands of years. Influenza and pneumonia will always be with us - they are not discrete events. A better comparison would be the Spanish flu, which also was an event of great historical significance, as well as a novel virus and a pandemic that lasted a finite length of time. We have a list of notable fatalities for the Spanish flu. List of Spanish flu cases. Categories are not as useful - their nested structure makes it difficult to have all the information in one place. Their decentralized structure makes them difficult to maintain. They aren't sortable. GabrielF (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete The list is, in principle, useful and worthwhile: I wouldn't have spent quite a bit of time on it, especially in its early days, if I did not think so, but, as I warned in March may happen, it has outgrown its usefulness. Eventually, I would suggest, whether the list survives or not is almost entirely dependent on a judgement as to how long a list can usefully be. 200 names? 500? 1000?  1500?  As soon as it becomes necessary to split such a list for manageability, it loses the benefit of it being a list article rather than a category, and many editors have stated that it has reached that stage long ago.  In relation to the comments about the Spanish Flu list: the number of people being listed here is approximately 900, and growing, while the deaths noted in the Spanish flu article is about one tenth of that; recentism and opinions on eligibility, factors of Wikipedia that did not exist in 1918, impinge negatively on this list; it is the determination of many editors to ensure that every person they hear about on their local news services is included here that makes this untenable and it is the incompleteness of the Spanish Flu list (arguably a weakness of it) that makes it viable as a wiki article. Kevin McE (talk) 15:08, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete — The list is huge and will only grow more unwieldy; its same purpose is much better served by just ensuring and the various sub-categories are kept up to date. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 16:11, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree that categories can serve as a replacement for lists. Categories are less useful to readers (can't be sorted, require you to click through multiple sub-categories to find information, etc), and are harder to maintain (you can't monitor membership by watching one article, you can't really include a citation for why a person is in a category). A tool that queried wikidata for a list of deaths and then presented results in a user-friendly format would be better, but that's not really something that exists within wikipedia as far as I know. GabrielF (talk) 16:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it does, but I don't know how to set it up. Ijon could probably make a URL that could be linked in the ==External links== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of something more along the lines of a template that would run a query on wikidata and then present the results in a nice table. So you would have an article called List of people who died of COVID-19, but there would be no manual editing of that article - when you went to edit all you would see was a template with a query and some presentation options. Then you could have a list that was sortable, had fields like age and brief description, but without the need for manual editing by wikipedia editors. GabrielF (talk) 15:23, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Split to much smaller sub-groups (e.g., List of people who died of COVID-19 in Italy or Earliest deaths due to COVID-19 (i.e., removing everything after approximately April), or else blank and redirect the list to the main pandemic article (and maybe page-protect that redirect). This is no longer an encyclopedic list, and we shouldn't continue maintaining this list, but there's also no need to hide the history from any editor who wants to copy a source to re-use in a different article, make sure that the content is in the linked articles, etc.  (For transparency, Lugnuts left a note on my user talk page about this; I assume that he contacted everyone else who had participated in the RFC that precipitated this.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I dropped a neutral note to everyone who commented at the RfC, and left a note there to say I'd done that. Thanks.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 17:34, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * And obviously, I'm rewarding your inclusiveness and transparency by voting against your AFD. 😜 WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oooooh, you'd like that, wouldn't you!  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 18:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep or Split The list cannot be adequately replaced by the simple category, as categories aren't sortable and are unwieldy to use. Furthermore, Wikipedia and its editors can clearly maintain lists of people that are much longer (even if we do eventually have to split them for manageability) -- for example, list of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. I can see the benefits of not listing every person who died on one page, but I don't think the list should be deleted entirely, per whatamidoing. MAINEiac4434 (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Split I know there are similar categories but this list is sortable by age, date and location. I think it could be split by country fairly easily. Every time I look at the list, I find names of people I'm surprised to see, I think the list(s) is informative and helps to destigmatize the disease. Liz Read! Talk! 21:52, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and if need be, split. The rationales outlined for deletion, and comparison to making a list of deaths due to influenza, cancer, or heart disease (comparisons which usually come from individuals with a certain agenda, but whatever...), are outright nonsensical. Covid is not a cause of death that has become common, it is a pandemic, a single historical event which in itself warrants such a list, just like the List of Spanish flu cases. It is notable and listworthy precisely because it has killed more notable people in a few months than influenza in decades. And since some people don't seem to get it, I will repeat it there: this is not a list of people who are notable for dying of covid, it's a list of notable people who died of covid. Others have already explained why a category would not be an adequate substitute. --Pesqara (talk) 22:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep The pandemic remains a singular momentous event, very unlike cancer or the flu, and deaths due to it remain notable and listworthy. The number of deaths is not an indictment of their notability or listworthiness. Brycehughes (talk) 03:04, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If deaths due to COVID-19 were notable and listworthy this list would have over 1 million entries. Since we limit this list to people who have articles (although a few entries actually go to redirects, whether that is appropriate I doubt), then clearly dieing of COVID-19 in and of itself is neither notable nor list worthy.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:52, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Again? These people are not notable for dying of covid, they are notable people who have died of covid. --Pesqara (talk) 15:27, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As if we don't maintain lists limited by the noteworthiness of their entries? How is this an argument? Brycehughes (talk) 23:28, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep This is an extraordinarily useful list. This is a distinct event and the list will likely add few new additions at some point and then can be fine tuned 2604:2000:1382:4C50:803D:6890:C807:221F (talk) 03:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Pesqara explained it well so I won't repeat. This is another example of what wikipedia does best and possible only because of our position as the number 1 reference source in the world.  Our cumulative efforts are better than any other source.  We have people power, we have the legwork available and also the legwork for constant scrutiny of such a list.  Breaking it up into more geographical smaller lists should also be done, but to rely exclusively on localized lists necessarily negates its usefulness on a global scale.  Yes, editing this long of an article can tax  computer and server data capacity.  That problem certainly does not advise destruction of the information as a solution.  I suggested breaking it into more manageable chunks that could be displayed as the whole article two months ago.  I got crickets.  Suddenly now, this needs a radical execution?  We are a living step in history.  We have the technology to document what is happening.  What is being proposed is to destroy that historical content, to achieve what goal?  Brownie deletion points?  Keeping this much of the existing information is inconvenient?  Words are beyond me to describe the absurdity. Trackinfo (talk) 04:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep agree that lists and categories both serve two important purposes. Most casual readers do not use categories and the UI for them sucks (no offense intended). This list is about the moment of history we’re in and conveys the loss of notable people in an encyclopedic context. Scarpy (talk) 07:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. The list is already, by definition, a list of notable people who have died of COVID-19, and therefore not indiscriminate. There is already a large number of similar lists on Wikipedia, including for common illnesses, such as tuberculosis. As with all such lists, this one does not assert that the disease is inherently notable, but that notable people dying from it is notable. Phediuk (talk) 11:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is a useful list. The argument that it is hard to maintain is not valid. Lots of things on Wikipedia is hard to maintain and this shouldn't be harder than many other things. And with time this list will be much more manageable. Split if needed. Mason (talk) 13:05, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: Useful list and lets face it this is a global pandemic which is not only a rare event but a historical one (tragically) and this list is useful. Split if needed. --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: The fact that it's so much more deadly than the others actually makes it even more notable, not less. Nom labeling this "common" is deceptive, at best. Kire1975 (talk) 13:37, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The key to COVID-19 is that overall it is not actually very deadly. That is why it has spread so fast, and so this is unmanageable while a list of notable people who dies of Ebola or SARS would be manageable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The key to covid is that it has killed over a million people already and has become a historic and whorld-changing event, whereas SARS has killed few hundreds and ebola killed in forty years the number of people that covid is now killing in two days. A list of notable people killed by SARS or ebola would be useless, for the simple reason it would be empty. --Pesqara (talk) 15:36, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep: This is a list of people having a Wikipedia article who died of Covid-19, not a general listing of every single victim on the planet. It is a somber reminder of the times we're living, if not else Basil_II (talk) 14:40, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep/Split: I agree with Pesqara and Pheiduk's reasons (and I also agree with the people saying that this is a useful list). However, this list might [unfortunately] become longer and too long to read, which explains why I put "split" in my vote, thus agreeing with WhatamIdoing. Either split it by country or continent/region, or by the date of the notable people's deaths (e.g. List of COVID-19 deaths in the Philippines, List of COVID-19 deaths in Europe, or List of COVID-19 deaths (January-September 2020), etc.). I understand the reasons of those who are in favor of deleting this but I would like to reiterate the stance of those who want to keep it: COVID-19 is not comparable to the so-called "common" diseases such as influenza and cancer. Covid is a new disease, unheard of before this year despite being related to other coronavirus diseases. Not to mention that the same disease caused a pandemic of historic proportions, something unseen in the digital era. Vida0007 (talk) 17:37, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - as long as the list is for notable people and every entry is reliably sourced, I have no issue with it. It displays the information in a much better way than a category would. Spiderone  17:59, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and if need be, split. Per above. --IndexAccount (talk) 18:06, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Please don't Delete. I feel this list is important for posterity. Split if must. Jazzhands90 (talk) 23:31, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Split or delete. This is still a relevant and notable topic area but an article of this size does not suit Wikipedia at all. My preference is for the article to be split, ideally by country but by month is also a good idea. If there is no will to split, then this article should just be deleted and replaced with a category where all these entries can be placed. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:32, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep just as it was the last two times someone nominated it for deletion. Reliable sources cover this, and everyone on the list is a blue link to their own article.   D r e a m Focus  10:12, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep: Flawed nomination.
 * Using WP:NTEMP (as in "") is not an acceptable rationale for deletion
 * The argument "" shows a lack of understanding of the nature of the disease. Cancer and heart attack will never have a vaccine. COVID is expected to eventually be eradicated.
 * Banana Republic (talk) 04:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep In my opinion, it is a notable list and it should stay, because the disease is the most important event of our time. Maybe some people on the list might not be so noteworthy, so they can be deleted from the list. If the size of the list is a problem, it can be splitted according to months or 3/6-months periods or according to the countries, etc. LostMyMind (talk) 14:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep "Too common" is a nonsensical reason to delete as this is what makes the page popular.  Our resources then scale accordingly as the page has had over a million readers and over 600 editors to date.  And, per WP:NOTPAPER, there is no significant practical limit.  Note that we already maintain lists of all deaths: Deaths in 2019 and Deaths in 2020 are among our most popular pages and the latter is especially linked on our main page.  Deaths from a specific cause are obviously less of a challenge than those generic lists. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and split per comments above. — hueman1 ( talk •  contributions ) 10:16, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and split if necessary, per above. Deus et lex (talk) 12:47, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep No valid reason given for deletion. This is a notable list, the media covers who died from this, anyone notable enough by Wikipedia standards to have an article can be listed.   D r e a m Focus  14:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete The biggest problem with this list is that it is kept to those with very well diagnosed cases, ignoring the fact that in most locals there are a group of people who almost certainly died, and are thought by their medical doctors to have dies from this disease, but it does not quite meet the stringent requirements. It is also almost certainly a too short list, and tends to more often cover people currently or recently notable, and exclude those people we have articles on who last were truly in the public eye a half century ago. Somehow I suspect there have been a few past olympians who died from this disease and no one has noticed. Also, I think the fact that in several countries this is a significant portion of all deaths makes this too large and unruly a list. Beyond this, no one is really demonstrating why we need this list when we have a category for it and limit the list to people we have articles on.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:08, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Let me understand: first you say it should be deleted because it's too short, then you say it should be deleted because it's too large? --Arborea1996 (talk) 10:11, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No you do not understand. On the one hand this is a list that is problematic because it is not comprehensive to all notable people who have died. On the other it is just plain too long to be useful.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete There is no possible way that such a list will ever meet wp:V using wp:RS to support the asserted cause of each death. At best, the vast majority of entries would always be citing gossip rags. This is not the calibre of content we want in WP. LeadSongDog come howl!  16:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per several clever editors above (LeadSongDog, Lugnuts, Kevin McE, and Iridescent among others). Couldn't possibly be maintained as an article (nor needed); far better as a category.  In addition, the paucity of reasonable keep arguments shows the unnecessity of keeping it ~ not to mention some of the personal attacks and ABF by some contributors here which lead me to discount just about anything they may offer; happy days, LindsayHello 16:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment there are roughly 1 million articles on living people in Wikipedia, and roughly 7.7 billion people worldwide, so Wikipedia has one article for every 7700 living people. Based on this ratio, and roughly 140 million COVID-19 deaths, if all things were proportionate, there would be 181 entries in this list.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:05, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There are in fact 785 entries on this list. So it appears notable people are more likely to die from this disease than the general public. It probably helps that there are so few notable people under age 18. Also the disease has been most intense in countries like the US where we are overrepresented with Wikipedia entries. In some other countries counted deaths may be disproportionately among the notable. Mexico has acknolwedge its death report is way too low, and some suspect India as well. On the other extreme the lzargest birth-year category in Wikipedia is 1989, so even though those under 18 are rarely notable and the longer people live the more likely they are to be notable considering notability is never lost once gained, our system disproprotionately in reality covers those who have become notable in the 21st century, and so there are probably many people who meet notability guidelines who have died from COVID-19 who no one has bothered creating an article on.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:35, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Next slide, please.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 17:24, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Your calculation is incorrect. If there are 140M deaths and one person out of 7700 is notable, you should get 18 thousands people.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * My calculations are correct, I just wrote a number wrong. There are 1.4 million deaths, so my numbers are right. If there were 140 million deaths that would be a much different ball game.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:40, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment Some have held up the Spanish Flu list as an example of a good list. It is a horrid list, where most entries are unsourced. In many ways it is a relic of a time when Wikipedia had less belief in verifiability. I think the fact that this list under covers cases of people who were notable awhile ago but have faded from the forefront of public notice is a major draw back.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:08, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per several clever editors above (Phieduk, Pesqara, Trackinfo, and Andrew Davidson among others). It is easily mantainable as an article, and it has already been explained how a category could not replace it adequately.  In addition, the paucity of reasonable delete arguments shows the unnecessity of deleting it. --Arborea1996 (talk) 10:11, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment If we do keep it, we should split it by country. A global list is clearly not maintainable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This is far more suited to a category, category tree or set of intersecting categories. But if it is kept, then it must be split - it currently has 532,520 bytes of markup. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:44, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep This is of great value. Thierry Caro (talk) 15:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * See also WP:USEFUL. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:47, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep it is of great value. Names and faces of notable people on a list are much more concrete and lively than cold numbers. The argument that it takes a lot of work is not really recievable, for two reasons imo: 1) it's not even that much work, you just Deaths in 2020 and then take look at those who have died of COVID-19. 2) if it's still too much of a chore for you, then stop doing it! no one is forcing you. editcount doesn't matter for shit. --Spafky (talk) 17:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The best part is, those who nominated it for deletion never made a single contribution to it, yet they complain that it is uneditable and too hard to mantain. --Pesqara (talk) 22:56, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Another misleading accusation and attempt to discredit editors rather than presenting a meaningful rationale. Lugnuts simply acted on the clear consensus on the talk page at the article.  Whether he had edited the article is entirely irrelevant. Kevin McE (talk) 13:16, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete. As Andy says, this is a sufficiently large list that it would be better handled as a category. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:47, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * STRONG Keep per reaons listed by other editors above, who said it better than I could. It's of immensely great value. (See comments made by Spafky, Trackinfo, Andrew Davidson, etc.) Paintspot Infez (talk) 18:03, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep It is useful/valuable despite its length.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:30, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep if it needs work to split or segment, that's fine, but deletion is patently an absurd position to adopt. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!&#33;!&#33;) 23:03, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * KEEP and don't split. Splitting will only make it more work to maintain. It's not even that big. If it gets too big remove detail rather than splitting. It doesn't even really need it's own references? It can serve as an index page that links to the death section of other pages. The inclusion criteria is simple, only include people who had a Wikipedia page prior to 2020. (Though, potentially you could split off a separate list of people who only gained prominence by their role in the situation? But that's unlikely to be justified for anyone outside Hubei?) Irtapil (talk) 23:09, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Irtapil brings up a good point. A major excuse being brought up is the size of the article.  As of this writing, there are 934 references.  They take up more than a third of the screen space.  And one of my pet peeves, how much data is being wasted in the unnecessary reference formatting (that multiplies hidden data usage)?  Why are all these references here?  Look at the editing patterns:  A new entry is made, another editor deletes it because there are no references, and it either disappears or is restored with references.  You are making each editor place extra data into the article.  We have WP:BEFORE.  Before you delete, look it up yourself.  In other words, know what you are talking about.  But deletionist editors are so eager to pull the trigger that they get conveniently stupid.  "Oh, I didn't have time."  "I couldn't find it."  Bullshit.  All of these individuals included in this list have to be notable.  They have an article.  Put the reference to their cause of death there.  Click on the link.  By simply removing references on this page we could save close to 50 percent of the data.  We ought to have a no reference (with a linked article referenced) policy on all list articles.  Amongst a group of supposedly learned editors, we ought to have a no stupidity policy as well.  I can dream. Trackinfo (talk) 03:40, 26 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep meets Wikipedia’s guidelines for a list. If it needs to be split, it could be split by country. PatriceMO1 (talk) 02:20, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Could we stop with nonsense deleting requests ?!--Petar Milošević (talk) 07:21, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep The article only lists the death of notable people, not all the 1 million people who died. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 07:30, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable deaths is fine.† Encyclopædius  15:25, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. All listings are for notable people, and there is no reason to deplete our encyclopedia's content, especially on a subject as crucially important as this one. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 22:56, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment this keeps popping up on my watchlist; there's a clear consensus to close this as keep. Time to get on with it please. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!&#33;!&#33;) 23:14, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Meets WP:SALAT. So long as all the entries are for people with WP articles, it is a useful and manageable list. A split may be needed in the future, but for now the size is reasonable, and hopefully the number of new entries will taper off as vaccines become available. PohranicniStraze (talk) 19:27, 27 November 2020 (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.