Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of unusual deaths (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. Cbrown1023 02:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

List of unusual deaths

 * — (View AfD)

This is the second nomination, but virtually all keep opinions in the original nomination were backed by simple "I like it" arguments. No matter how "interesting" this list is, it is theoretically unverifiable (not the fact that these people died, but that their deaths ought to be considered "unusual" and therefore worthy of inclusion). As consequence of this, there is perpetual additions and removals and squabbling over whether a death should be included in the article. Simões ( talk/contribs ) 00:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep - "It's a hard article to maintain" is no argument for deletion; if that was the case, George W. Bush would be a goner, too. Also, the deletion arguments for this article are backed by "I don't like it" arguments, which are pretty lame, too. And when you get down to it, what else is there to support the existence of any article except "I like it" - although stated as "it's important" to imply that this judgment is objective. - DavidWBrooks 01:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Fortunately, I never said anything about the difficulty of its maintenance. Please consider my argument, which is that the list is theoretically unverifiable. This is a direct appeal to Wikipedia policy (unlike yet another "I like it" argument). Simões ( talk/contribs ) 02:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Mortality statistics are available and from those I think you can determine whether a death is unusual. Granted the most unusual deaths are likely caused by rare diseases like progeria, but still I think it's doable.--T. Anthony 06:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * So what mortality rate is to be set for a particular circumstance of death? Is it 5% of all deaths (millions to add to the list)? 1% (still millions)? .01% (we might be getting to hundreds of thousands at this point...for each circumstance)? Even if there are such accessible figures, there is no way to set a non-arbitrary standard based on them.
 * Secondly, statistics exist on cause of death, not "circumstances concurrent with or immediately preceding the death." For example, Pope John XXI's cause of death is getting crushed by debris (or maybe it was just asphyxiation). He shares this fate with millions. What is "unusual," I'm assuming, is that he's a pope and it happened in scientific laboratory. Ergo, he's on the list. But such conjunctions of circumstances can make anyone's death unusual: so and so's great grandfather was the only white, male, left-handed American citizen who died in the state of Texas on a Thursday afternoon by drowning in a body of water containing more than 38ppb of benzene. Grandpa now has instant parity with the Pope.


 * Finally, if one might then say that only notable people should be included on the list, then this doesn't help much. Like with the pope and non-notable grandfather examples, it merely takes sufficiently bold research to include every dead, notable person by virtue of conjuncting enough circumstances roughly concurrent with his or her death to make it also unique. Simões ( talk/contribs ) 06:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * From 1959 to 2003 there was 3696 lightening deaths in the United States. This is 84 per annum, which would make it at maximum 1 in 15,000 deaths. The rates internationally might actually be lower than that due to the US having more storms than many nations. Anyway I think situations that rare or rarer can be dealt with on a list of notable people without becoming too large. Objecting to individual cases on the list doesn't say much about the list itself or whether a death can be rare/unusual.--T. Anthony 07:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree there's no way to set some objective standard where an algorithm decides what goes on this list; it will have subjectivity and concerns about POV. But the same thing is true for everything in wikipedia (does this Pokemon deserve an article? this high school? this band?) but we seem to muddle through. -DavidWBrooks 11:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete Unmaintainable; I feel the threshhold for an article like this is that it should be exhaustible and that it shouldn't be too long. This seems to fail that.  Furthermore, its inherently POV and likely has OR problems as well.  What is 'unusual' to one person may not seem so to another.  One may try to counter this by defining unusual as being "not many people have died this way" but surely there are countless numbers of ways in which only one or two people in all of history have died.  There is no real way to have concrete criteria that avoid POV and OR issues. --The Way 07:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and The Way. Amusing and/or tragic as many of these deaths are, it's unencyclopedic to link them in such a way. A large number of these deaths only become "unusual" because they happen to have befallen a prominent person or because they occurred in an unexpected manner (there's an American President listed who died of indigestion, which was probably a common enough way to die at the time, but presumably his death is "unusual" because he died of it or because it's not something that we tend to die from or whatever), which opens up more cans of worms than can be gainfully dealt with. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 07:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Change name to List of notable deaths. Agree with nominator that "unusual" implies this is inherently POV.  However, this information is encyclopedic and should be kept.  "Notable" leaves less room for POV as there are wikipedia policies defining what notable means, including requiring things like third party sources, which all entries on this list should have. VegaDark 10:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that that really helps either. People are notable - and many of the people in this list are patently so - but their deaths are not necessarily. As I read it, "notable deaths" would only cover the small sub-group of people on this list who are not notable for any reason but the fact that they died in a possibly unusual manner (the pizza deliveryman with the timebomb and so on). The majority of this list is more along the lines of "List of the manners of death of notable people", since the actual fact that Pope John XXI was crushed to death (for example) only becomes notable when it was Pope John XXI being crushed to death and not anyone else. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 10:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's verifiable, interesting information. Isn't judging 'notability' also a POV judgment? Fys. Ta fys aym. 10:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * My main objection to keeping this, is the uncertaintly of the unusual criterion. Would innovative suicides and murders qualify ?  Where is the cut-off point ?  -- Simon Cursitor 12:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * If they are rare enough forms of murder or suicide I'd say yes. Well unless they are just slightly different variants on a common form. (Like say using a hard to find sleeping pill to commit suicide or being shot with a gun that had Hello Kitty stickers on it) And there are things on here that truly are rare "freak" forms of death. Check Ray Chapman, Sherwood Anderson, Georgi Markov, Keith Relf, Vic Morrow, Joseph W. Burrus, Brian Wells, or Timothy Treadwell. Then tell me which of those is not a rare/unusual way to die. I think this list is full of invalid examples, but a valid list can be formed from it.--T. Anthony 13:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * None of them are. Or all of them are, depending on how conjunction-happy you want to get. Ray Chapman died of a crushed skull. Millions and millions have died of this. But wait, he died of a crushed skull–crushed by a baseball! We've narrowed it down to (say) hundreds, and he's, perhaps, the only notable person to die of a crushed skull, crushed by a baseball (though I'm going to go ahead and doubt this, too). Augusto Pinochet's official cause of death is listed as both congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema. Either one of these will probably include dozens of notable people. But both together narrows it down to, as far as I know, just him. He's not on the list now, though, so what an exclusion this is! Again, there is absolutely no possible way to prevent everyone from getting on this list. It is flawed by design.Simões ( talk/contribs ) 16:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You're either being stubborn, snarky, or literal to the point of absurdity. You really think all skull wounds are the same, none more unusual than the other? Are you making that evaluation as a doctor? Still if I buy the premise how weird is that? People who die in outer space just die of asphyxiation, people who get eaten by bears "really" just die of blood loss, etc. But didn't strike you what these people actually died of rather than just "the only thing I want to pay attention to to make my point."--T. Anthony 17:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Baseball related deaths are generally children. From 1973 to 1995 88 such deaths were reported. Although tragic this is still less than 4 per year and I've never seen any evidence that it's more common in adults. Children's bodies are often more fragile, but even then 38 of the deaths were apparently from being hit in the chest. This was the single greatest baseball-related fatality cause. Therefore baseball related death is unusual.--T. Anthony 17:19, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd like to warn you against making further personal attacks in this or any other discussion. Now, I noted that this Chapman fellow died of a crushed skull, that it was crushed by a baseball, and that those who share this circumstance are few. Please read the rest of what I wrote. Also, I take it that you're unable to provide even an arbitrary standard for inclusion, given that your current method is to proffer an example and then insult those who question it. Simões ( talk/contribs ) 17:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I was a bit confused by your response, but I tried not to attack you as a person. Criticizing an attitude of one message isn't criticizing you as a whole as you are apparently a very bright person. I tried to limit my disagreement to that. Still it did come across meaner than I like so I'll strike out the first post.--T. Anthony 03:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Now as to the issue itself I don't feel I was being arbitrary. The lowest accidental death rate I find is the Bahamas with 17.9 per 100,000 people. Using the "1 per 2000" notion in rare disease an accident that kills less than 17.9 per 200,000,000 per annum I think could be rare. This translates to kinds of accidents that kill less than 537 people per year. A similar method can be done with suicide and homicide.--T. Anthony 04:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - but focus more on the uniqueness of the occurrences: a fatal beaning in a major league baseball game; falling off a horse and impaling the head on a nail; a heart attack in the middle of the field in the midst of a National Football League game; execution by having molten gold poured down the throat; a U.S. President dying as a result of medical malpractice (although it wasn't considered as such at the time)... B.Wind 19:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yet again, these are examples of allegedly unusual deaths, not a method to determine whether one is. Not one person voting keep and no one editing the article has been able to provide a method. No one has even given an arbitrary standard, which would at least be a start. The reason for this is simple: there's no possible way. When people use the term, what they really mean is that they find a death and the circumstances surrounding it interesting. So, technically, the article title should be "List of interesting deaths." But this should make it even clearer how badly the list violates WP:V. Simões ( talk/contribs ) 19:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It doesn't need to be "alleged." Some forms of death truly are rare and this can be statistically determined. I think doing so is more work then anyone on the list is willing to do, but it's not in itself impossible. For example we have an article called Rare disease. The term is not POV, it is an actual medical term. I think by the same standard a "rare accident" could be one that effects less than 1 in 2000 accident victims. Perhaps this would be better as List of people who died of rare diseases and rare accidents, still I don't understand your insistence here. That said I apologize again for being overheated yesterday. I was confused by your response, but I was out of line if I hurt you.--T. Anthony 03:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Why is a death caused by medical malpractice (to take one example) even "unusual" or "interesting"? The sad truth of the matter is that there are more deaths caused this way than I think anyone would want to contemplate. Indeed, not too far north of where I live, there's a particular doctor who's accused of causing a phenomenal number of deaths in this manner. The only "unusual" or "interesting" aspect of a President dying that way is that (much like our crushed Pope), it was a President who died that way and not some average Joe. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 22:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That's why I stated the uniqueness of the occurrence. Unique means one of a kind. There was only one President who died as a result of medical malpractice, only one major league baseball player who died of a beaning in a major league game, only one known instance of a person being executed by having molten gold poured down his throat, only one person in recorded history to having been adjudged in a coroner's inquest has having laughed himself to death. The actual definition of uniqueness is strictly NPOV: there is only one instance of it occurring under those circumstances. Most on the current list would not fit that criterion and would have to be weeded out, but at least there is an objective criterion with a standard definition. B.Wind 23:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * There is only one president to die from cancer (Ulysses S. Grant). There is only one president to die from cirrhosis of the liver (Franklin Pierce). Got a better standard? Simões ( talk/contribs ) 15:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * First are you certain there is only one President in the entire history of the world to die from cancer? Did you check President of Finland, President of the French Republic, President of Mexico, and President of the Philippines to name a few? Second the President thing was only one example. Do you know of other Major League baseball players, in any nation that has a Major League, who died of a beaning? Can you name anyone else at all killed by a baseball strike to the head? (Or from molten gold or poisoned umbrellas or whatever) I hope this does not seem mean, it's simply what I feel are valid questions.--T. Anthony 16:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Then they're the only Presidents of the United States to die from these things (though there's a reasonable chance that Grant is the only president of any nation to die of throat cancer). If we're limiting by profession (e.g., professional baseball player), then this should be admissible. The slippery slope follows thus. Simões</b> ( talk/contribs ) 22:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Very well. Do you know of any other notable person in any profession to die of a baseball hit to the head? (Or molten gold or poisoned umbrellas)--T. Anthony 04:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I know of only one person to die of having molten gold poured down his throat, but there have been other people who died of having other hot liquids pour down their throats. Considering as relevant the composition of the liquid pour down one's throat is an arbitrary choice made in order to reach a desired conclusion, much like first considering profession to be relevant and then considering it to be irrelevant. Continue to stipulate criteria (which, if used for this article, violate WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR), and I will gladly show the reductio ad absurdum. <b style="color:#006400;">Simões</b> ( talk/contribs ) 19:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't agree it's arbitrary. In mortality statistics deaths by botulism are treated differently than deaths by tetanus even though both involve infections from bacteria in the genus clostridium. The effects of the bacteria are quite different as is treatment. Likewise the effects of molten gold on the body would be different than other liquids due to differences in melting point, composition, etc. Still I think we're never going to reach common ground here so I hope you have a good weekend and again I apologize if I insulted you earlier.--T. Anthony 01:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep - Explain how unusual is strictly POV. It can be used objectively, since unusual states these deaths do not normally occur. The list is maintainable, since unusual deaths, by nature of being unusual are not happening in such a large number (especially in terms of actually being notable) that it is impossible to keep up. Now to answer some concerns that anyone's death can be made unusual - that is just absurd. The circumstances you listed, drowning in a lake (we're assuming your great grandfather wasn't doing anything incredibly strange) is not unusual. Even with the modifiers you presented, it doesn't become unusual. The modifiers don't change the fact he died in a usual manner. Just because there isn't a strict set of standards doesn't make it POV, it just means any strict set of standards would fail the article. For instance, look at the listing for David Bailey. Is that not unusual. Could you, under any circumstances, claim that dying by having a rat urinating on someone not be unusual. Not hypothetically. In reality, can you claim that, and if you were, could you explain how that is usual. Many of these deaths are notable enough to be passed down through history or be reported by news, so clearly, the list has a lot of merit. --THollan 23:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * In which case, the question becomes at which point we say that a given death is "unusual". In Bailey's case, I'm no medical specialist, but we'd need to see just how common an infection of leptospirosis is (let alone one which turns fatal). The article on that condition implies that vets have been known to get it, but actually digging up some statistics would be the key. Is an unusual cause of death something which only 5 people have been the victim of, or is the number more like 100 or more? BigHaz - Schreit mich an 23:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Leptospirosis deaths seem to be not that rare in parts of the Third World. Checking the modern world I find Hawaii seven people have died of it in the past decade. That'd be about 1 in 10,000 deaths in Hawaii I think. I couldn't find the rate for the US as a whole. Make of all this what you will.--T. Anthony 14:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Addendum, I see he was Irish. In the Republic of Ireland 175 confirmed cases occurred in the period from 1986 to 1996. Death rates were not listed and actual figures of cases might be four times that number. If true this means 70 cases per year in that period. Mortality rate is 25%, according to sources I found, so we could estimate 17-18 per year. That's assuming rates have stayed constant since then and they may not have. Again interpret that as you will.--T. Anthony 14:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the specific cause of death may not be unusual, but the circumstances (i.e., the rat urinating on him being what caused his death), would be what makes it unusual. To me, the biggest problem with trying to come up with a set standard for what is a usual death and what is an unusual death is that it would be automatically fail the purposes of what it is trying to validate. It also ignores the fact that it is either the cause of death, or the circumstances leading to death that make it unusual. You can't say that many people are dying from nose bleeds. If that was the case, we'd be dropping like flies. --THollan 07:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * keep entertaining, though the documentation is variable. Why should I deprive others of what I enjoyed myself? I know some more good ones to add as well.DGG 07:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * With great regret, because it's a wonderfully entertaining article, I have to go with Delete, because no clear methodology is provided for specifying what this article should contain. I find the contents of the article to be notable ( virtually by definition ) and verifiable ( links to the appropriate articles ). But unless there is a clear methodology for determining what goes into this article, it is POV. That different people's POVs may prevail at different times does not address this problem. Show me a way to make this article NPOV, and I'll change my opinion, but for now I don't think it should stay. WMMartin 18:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. Whilst looking for something else I found the List_of_important_operas. This seems to me to be equally POV, but in a recent discussion the consensus was not to delete. I wonder if we can come up with a good way to address the general issue of "lists of interesting, important or unusual things"... WMMartin 19:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * comment In some cases, there are standard brief reference sources, and one with an appropriately concise coverage can be chosen, & an article can be limited to the ones in there--or to some selection thereof, or to at least all the ones in there plus what one can justify.   To use such a list as a limiting source is  almost certainly fair use,   just   the information is being used --to reproduce the list unchanged is almost certainly not. There may be lists of things according to ratings: It may be necessary to stop an an arbitrary number. This also applied to the general use of list of notable Xs. For odd things, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has some--although there is no documentation in Brewer whatsoever, so it does not make a good source for content, it can serve as a list of things to include. The early eds. are public domain. Similarly with standard almanacs, and the like.  A limit to works mentioned in (whatever) is anothr way to do it. The choice of the place to take the listing from can be debated, on the article talk page, and thankfully not here. DGG 19:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep - absolutely cannot believe that this is being listed for deletion. It's factual, verifiable information. Please stop AFD abuse. Trollderella 05:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. I agree that this article may be hard to maintain and prone to squabbling, but that does not mean it should be deleted.  Verkhovensky 07:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: The criteria that Dstanfor has added into the lede - that the cause of death must be mentioned in the person's wikipedia article, or be the subject of an article itself - is, I think, an excellent filter that should go a long way toward addressing legitimate concerns about arbitrariness. - DavidWBrooks 12:54, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. Great article, should be kept, no further comments. Effer 22:42, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. This article is entirely subjective. Because one person finds death by cholera (Tchaicovsky) unusual, it does not mean it should be posted here. Eddie Willers 23:08, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Abuse of VfD; it survived one, and because an individual was unhappy with those results, we now have to endure another?Mistergrind 00:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The original AfD took place in May. This would be abuse of process if the original one had taken place a few days ago, but 7 months is a legitimate length of time to wait, particularly given (as the nominator has mentioned) that the original AfD involved a series of invalid arguments. Just because an article survives AfD at one point doesn't mean that, some time later, it can't be renominated and even deleted. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep- it could be handy someday. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 02:18, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Kill it, in some unusual, although utterly subjective, way--Sandy Scott 21:04, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - people forget that "unusual" is a workable criterion for matters such as dying. If more subjective than others, the list is not as subjective as to validate its deletion. Dahn 03:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Vehement keep - I admit, I like it. It's entertaining. Furthermore, while of necessity not based on as strict criteria as other articles, the deaths listed here are generally sourced and generally unusual to the general reader. For me, that's a good enough reason to keep it. Plus, I might point out that the list has undergone extensive pruning in the past few weeks, so there are people who actively maintain it and prevent it from spinning out of control. Biruitorul 05:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete I've been trying to edit this list for a week or two now. It's an interesting idea, but I don't think we'll be able to iron down clear criteria for adding something to the list or not. It's too soft an idea that you can't really put a clear line on what belongs and what doesn't. If some of the people voting keep can go to the lists' talk page and help iron out criteria, I'd say keep. But with it's current status, I'll have to say delete. Dstanfor 15:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, what can you define as 'unusual'? It's unencyclopedic, and would be difficult to maintain. --///Jrothwell (talk)/// 18:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you asked. Unusual is usually defined by frequency of occurance. It's pretty easy to set that objectively say, by using the 1/10,000 figure as a cutoff. Trollderella 20:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * See the above discussion. Aside from the problem of arbitrarily choosing a cutoff point (note that 1/10,000 will include every lightning death in the history of the human species), there is the issue of what counts as a relevant circumstance to the death, which are chosen or not chosen depending on how interesting they make the description of a death sound. All of this is original research, and that, of course, can play no part in an article. <b style="color:#006400;">Simões</b> ( talk/contribs ) 22:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand how it is original research and not just making an editorial decision. From what I gather, original research is me publishing my own findings on Wikipedia, so let's just say - percentage of people who die when they suffer a nosebleed. Edit - Also, just because there is some subjectivity to the matter doesn't mean it is not suitable for Wikipedia. For instance, a debate on notability, you have are making a subjective opinion at the end of the day. The point is, the list isn't subjective. Unusual isn't the same as strange. We could safely say it would be unusual for my speakers to burst into flames while playing music at a low level. --THollan 02:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * depends on what you're doing for criteria for inclusion. if you use the statistical method suggested, to prevent original research, someone's going to have to find a source listing unusual death percentages. If they have to find many sources and combine them into one article, that's seems like original research to me.
 * Then virtually all articles are OR as they may require "finding many sources and combining them in an article." Still possibly a different compromise could be done. In the media "unusual death" is a reported term. So I suppose we could say "List of deaths deemed unusual by the media" as our opinion of what's unusual would not be taken into account. (This seems unnecessary to me, but I'll put it out there)--T. Anthony 07:48, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * This is getting silly, IMHO. There's no algorithm that will determine what goes in and what doesn't in some "objective" manner; the consensus of people who work on this article is the best we can do. If that doesn't seem to be good enough, then people should vote to delete. - DavidWBrooks 11:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Please keep: Information can be entertainment, it is the only reason I am here - I am also more informed after reading this. I understand that this is a fuzzy set, but the entry tends towards the comprehensive.
 * 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.