Wikipedia talk:Database reports/Living people on EN wiki who are dead on other wikis

Suggestion
I suggest putting in separate section, persons who have year of birth in En WP different from at least one other wiki. This can be a sign that the page is about a different person. Sole Soul (talk) 23:50, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll think about it. But this would cost much performance (and i have to find the born cats in all 71 wikis) Merlissimo 04:56, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Another suggestion: exclude (or at least distinguish) pages that contain the word "and" in their titles, this indicate that the article is may be about 2 persons (one of them is a live), e.g. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Augusto and Michaela Odone. Sole Soul (talk) 00:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
 * We are trying to find a solution for the iw bots so that each person got a redirect which is not solved by bots. Then only the two person pages would be linked each other and also single person pages are linked each other, but these would also contain IWs to the redirects. Merlissimo 04:56, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Would you mean sorting the items by language ? Since most of the foreign articles are written in language that I (and most certainly other people) do not speak, that would be helpful. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 10:48, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you give me an example layout with someone who is death on multiple wikis? Merlissimo 12:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

interwiki link
Is it correct that there is only a need to remove the inter wiki link if the death claim at the other wiki is found to be in correct? If the subject is dead then there is no need to remove the inter wiki link? Off2riorob (talk) 11:37, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * By remove the interwiki link, do you mean the link on the article itself? Those should only be removed if they're linking two different people. If the death claim at the other wiki is incorrect, you should probably fix it at the other wiki if you are able. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:17, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * If the two articles are on different people then I don't think there is much point in only fixing the EN one as I believe there are bots that will put the link back. You actually need to change the links on both articles, but having done this a few times I find I can even navigate the Japanese Wikipedia if I need to. But I'd be a bit nervous about editing in a language I don't understand where I think something is wrong. Probably better to use wikiprojects and or user boxes to find an active editor here who knows that language.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  16:01, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, understood. Off2riorob (talk) 16:03, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Publicising this report.
I think we've done enough of these to establish that this method works at finding articles that need fixing, even if in some cases its just that they are miscategorised or incorrectly linked. However we are making fairly slow progress as the number of articles on the list has only dropped by about a quarter so far. I've put this on the list of reports on Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard, but I'd like to get a bot to notify projects of people tagged for their project who are on the list. Do people think that would be a good idea, and if so would they be happy for the bot to direct queries here - I'm assuming there'll be a few along the lines of "thats not our jockey its an astronomer who died".  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  16:01, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Publishing it on the SIGNPOST was a much better idea, since I learnt about it that way :) Regards, Comte0 (talk) 10:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Likewise. I have attacked some of the low hanging fruit where the death date on the other wiki was long enough ago to suggest that there was some sort of mistake somewhere. In many of these cases the interwiki link was to a completely different person and the reverse link was to a different article than the original on en wiki. A did wonder if the tool could be modified to flag these cases which would suggest that the two articles are not on the same person. Boissière (talk) 22:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Interwikis bots detect those conflicts. The easiest solution would be asking interwiki bot operators if they could check all linked articles in non autonomous mode and solve all conflicts:
 * Another solution would be a sublist containing all persons that also have different birth date. But a first check last week returned too many results because enwiki categorized unknown birth by decade and most other wikipedia by century. Merlissimo 10:28, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I've found fixing the incorrect links to be fairly quick and I hope useful, mind you I'm only dipping my toe into vaguely familiar languages so far. But I think it would be better to fix such errors than to screen them out of the report.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:17, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I check the interwikis using my bot in semi automated mode to solve some conflicts. The bot detected ten conflicts requiring six edits on enwiki and a few edits on other wikipedias. Merlissimo 17:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I check the interwikis using my bot in semi automated mode to solve some conflicts. The bot detected ten conflicts requiring six edits on enwiki and a few edits on other wikipedias. Merlissimo 17:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * There were 554 entries on the 29th June 2010, this fell to 384 by the 26th July before this signpost article. Subsequent changes were to 342 on the 27th and 295 on the 28th. So a big welcome to all the signpost readers who've popped by to help, if any of you are active in other languages I believe this technology could be of benefit elsewhere - there may even be instances where the EN wiki article has someone as dead but other wikis don't.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Update. This week they published a further signpost article Wikipedia Signpost/2010-09-13/Sister projects, mostly written by myself and various people who work on the Swedish, Latin, Slovenian and German versions of this report.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:23, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Proof

 * Just my opinion but it seems to me that we should probably have some kind of references on these people before we can actually remove the name or claim that they are done. I've done a few of these but I've always put a reference in the article for an obituary or some kind of corroborating evidence besides wiki. Seems people are just using the foreign wikis as the reference. Williamb (talk) 21:08, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Er... you've got me thinking  now. Golly, that  must  be extremely  time consuming. I've just  been going  by  the foreign  Wiki.--Kudpung (talk) 09:57, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Not just your opinion, wp:BLP and commonsense requires this. That's why the instructions say "Verify that someone is dead (or not) by an external source (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (self-references to avoid)#Avoid referring to "Wikipedia"}}". Mind you I've made exceptions when after looking through the history of an article I've found that someone miscategorised it in the first place. But I suspect most of the easy ones are now done and we have a mix of ones where different wikis treat missing people differently, and ones where the Wiki that has classified the person as dead has done so without a source. Some of these anomalies are turning out to be errors on the non-English Wikipedia, and in my view describing a living person as dead is a worse error than having an out of date bio that doesn't mention that someone has died.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  12:00, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * 'people' is me for one. I am naturally  aware of the need for accuracy, in  fact  I  mentioned previously  about  the dangers of saying  someone is dead when they  aren't. However, I  suppose I  was lulled into thinking that  the foreign  sites who  provided a date of death had got it  from  somewhere - most, if not  all, of the subjects are nationals of those countries.--Kudpung (talk) 12:43, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

historic figures
Something has happened that has added a couple of thousand historic figures whose death dates are uncertain to this report. IMHO not everyone who has lived has a known death date and this renders the report less useful. Does anyone know how we can get the old useful report back?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  10:51, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * My bot checks all articles in category tree Category:Living people. Normally this category has no subcategory, but according to log there were 4181 subcategories this morning. The cause is this edit which adds Category:WikiProject_Biography and its subcategories to the checked articles. I reverted it.
 * btw: on dewiki the born cat is used as root cat and every dead people should have a death cat there. Sometimes this is "death in x th century" or something even more general if the date is not exacly known. Merlissimo 12:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Merlissimo I was hoping it was something like that. As we get down below 150 anomalies I'm increasingly encountering ones where we have different policies on different languages as to how we handle missing people - This could mean there will be an irreducible minimum, at least as far as I'm concerned - others with more languages may do better.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think missing people should be in Category:Missing people or category:Possibly living people and not in category:living people. Articles with cat year of death unknown/missing are ignored because its a subcategory of category:dead people. Merlissimo 15:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Today the toolserver killed one of the first queries (which normally takes only about 100 seconds) running on s1 because of high lag after ten minutes run time. Merlissimo 13:52, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually I kind of wish we could keep that other list TOO, I've been working on some of them.A lot of them really need work. Williamb (talk) 07:56, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I started the bot with category:Possibly living people as root cat - just as a try to see whats happens. On the run tomorrow category:living people will be used again. I think there is still much work at the moment using the old config. Maybe we can/should extends the search to other categories when the result goes below one hundred. Merlissimo 16:47, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree - I fixed several of them. It would be nice to have a separate spinoff list, as its large it wouldn't need a daily update provided people removed or struck the ones they'd done.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:03, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Dimitri Nikolau
There seems to be 2 Dimitri Nikolaus one is a Greek composer, the other a Italian cinematographer and both IMDB and Wiki have them all mixed together. I'm not sure how to straighten it out. Williamb (talk) 23:00, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think they may be the same person - a Greek Italian dimitrinicolau.it. Needs a reliable source for the death though.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:07, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

False inclusions
Some articles on the list are false alerts; where two or more people are the subject of the article, it is only to be expected that their death dates will differ, and thus for a period of time the article will be both included in Deaths in YYYY categories and BLP categories. Thus, for example, there is no error in either the Japanese or the English articles on Albert and David Maysles, nor any contradiction between the two, in that they both report David as dead and Albert as living (as do the Spanish and French articles, but they were not in the report).

I'll remove such cases from the list now, but the bot/invitation should take account of such cases, or at a minimum the lede should alert readers to the possibility of such anomolies (or non-anomolies, depending on how you look at it). Kevin McE (talk) 06:50, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The question is if articles about two persons should be in born and death categories, too. E.g. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky is in 1925 births, but not in 1933 births and 1991 deaths. Albert and David Maysles is not categorized in any births and deaths categories.
 * All other articles about multiple persons except these two are also categorized as dead. (e.g. Janet and Allan Ahlberg). At the last run my bots ignored 93 articles because they are in living people AND deaths.
 * So i would add death categories in these cases because its done in most other cases, too. (Although changing the script would be much more work). Merlissimo 11:06, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd rather such anomalies were included in the report instead of left out. It's easy to ignore ones you've already looked at as the links are a different shade of blue.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  07:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

New root cat / filtered report
I changed to root search cat from Category:Living people to Category:Births by year and filtered the result to Living people, Possible living people and not in Living people or Possible living people. Now the living people part lost 23 entries because there is no born cat. Most of them are sibling articles we discussed above. But i haven't done any closer look yet. Merlissimo 11:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Deaths using primary sources
We have a number of anomalies where we have someone as still living and other language versions of Wikipedia have sourced their death from US social security data. I'm sure most local papers would happily publish a death notice for a 1950s sports star who dies locally. But they may not do so online. So sometimes we can source obits from local papers etc, but not always. Is this one of those rare occasions where it would be OK to use a primary source? Obviously as these are for existing articles the GNG doesn't apply to this and we would just be adding facts. I'm not sure what is best here, so I've asked for guidance at the OR policy page  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:51, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Beru Khyentse Rinpoche
Beru Khyentse Rinpoche has a birth cat of 1947 on EN but a death cat of 1946 on ZH! The ZH article also has anothe birth cat - I assume it's dealing with two people instead of one?  Lugnuts  (talk) 20:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The Chinese article is about both this individual and his predecessor, hence it contains both lifespans and is categorized as such. So this is one of those entries on the report we can't do anything about, unfortunately.... Canadian   Paul  20:04, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

New format
The new format for this report now includes people that are not linked to other language wikis e.g. André Corriveau (doctor). Who do I speak to to get this fixed ? -- Racklever (talk) 11:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Racklever. I put a post on the talkpage of the user who changed it (User talk:Merlissimo).  Lugnuts  (talk) 11:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Edit - I see you've found it too!  Lugnuts  (talk) 11:42, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Births / Deaths prior to around 1000 AD
Wouldn't it be prudent to exclude people before say 1000 AD from the scope of this project as the great majority of them have unknown dates of birth or indeed death? If other wikis have somehow managed to "guess" the date of their demise, why should this one imitate that historical fiction?BigEars42 (talk) 03:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. This should be a seperate list, along with a stand alone list for people with no year of birth category. I think the purpose of this list is primarily linked to BLP issues and "recent" deaths (say from 1900 onwards) across all wikis.  Lugnuts  (talk) 07:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My goal is to have the birth/death data available by many different automated tools. There are already many external tools using this.
 * If you don't know the exact year of death you can add a more general category like e.g. Category:1st-millennium BC deaths‎ or a century category. If you don't know even the millennium, you can use Category:Year of death unknown. Same for year of birth. On dewiki we also have categories like de:Kategorie:Gestorben im 4. oder 3. Jahrtausend v. Chr.‎, so that people who lived near turn of the millennium year must not be added to the general unknown year category. dewiki has only four people at the unkown death category, for all other at least the millennium is known.
 * The recent deaths are already separated because they should be contained in the sublists for this year death, Living people and Possibly living people.
 * Most wikis don't have a living people category, so the only way to get this info is to look if a birth category but not death category is present. Even on enwiki you cannot trust the (possible) living categories. The report shows that there are many people in this category although there are also categorized as death. enwiki is the only wiki having so many birth categories missing. Merlissimo 10:13, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * There's nothing wrong with reporting all this info, but I think the last two (other and without a born cat) would be better suited to a subpage of this report.  Lugnuts  (talk) 12:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The report has the same layout on all wikis. It's impossible for me to create a second subpage on all those wikis i cannot even understand the currently used title. Merlissimo 12:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Why is this report flagging groups of people?
The LIVINGDEAD subsection of this report flags the article 108 Martyrs of World War II. I am at a loss over which born category to put this article in. I don't think the intent is that I should create a category:Year of birth before World War II. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wbm1058 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are lots of problems with this report, making it less and less helpful.  Lugnuts  (talk) 08:10, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It is possibly because the article uses category:Polish civilians killed in World War II which is a sub-category of category:Dead people. Some categories are designed for individuals and not groups of people. --Racklever (talk) 08:54, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm hoping that these anomalies are in some ways a sign of the project's success. There have always been anomalies because; Different language versions have different rules as to how old people need to be before you assume they are dead, Some people will put birth and death cats on duos; Some of the intrawiki links and categories combine dead and living people; I'm sure I've seen a muse/model categorised under a dead artist. As the wiki grows so the number of anomalies will grow, and many of the non-english wikis will be growing faster than EN. So as we resolve the ones that can be resolved we have a residue of anomalies, some that will be resolved when the other person in a duo dies or the person would be 115 years old, and some that will never be resolved. Perhaps we need a tweak to the report to list some false positives that are to be screened out from subsequent reports.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  12:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Multiple births
Is there a consistent policy for birth and death categorization for multiple people, particularly those categorized in category:Multiple births? For example, two of the Dionne quintuplets are living, and three are dead. The Dionnes have not been put in category:1934 births, although they are "people born in 1934". This conveniently avoids the need to match a born category with both living and dead categories. However, we also have Brino quadruplets in category:1998 births, Dilley sextuplets in category:1993 births and Genain quadruplets in category:1930 births, conveniently all are still reported as living. Categorization problems arise when a multiple birth sibling dies, as Viet and Duc Nguyen are flagged by this report as "living people" in category "en:2007 deaths." So is the solution for the Nguyens to remove them from category:1981 births, category:2007 deaths and category:Living people? This handling is unsatisfying and inconsistent to me. Should multiple births be categorized by year, or not? Only while they are all alive, but not after one of them dies?? --Wbm1058 (talk) 16:30, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that the Dionne quintuplets were in born, living and died categories before this 2 May 2010 edit, which put the article in category:Biographies of multiple people. Category:Biographies of multiple people moved to category:Articles about multiple people on 6 September 2010.  —Wbm1058 (talk) 17:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes there are a few examples like that. If it becomes a big problem it might be worth tweaking the bot so that category:Articles about multiple people are screened out. But we should remember that this report is designed to find anomalies for human editors to look at, most of the time that means an article needs fixing if we can find an appropriate reference. But occasionally it just means there is an anomaly. The drawback of screening out the category is that we won't find genuine errors there, but if the genuine errors are rare that may be sensible.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * One of the suggestions made on my talk page was to create a new category along the lines of "Categorization by death year not appropriate" that we could use to screen out multiple births and any other kind of page that would show up on this report but isn't simple to categorize with our current options. We could have a similar, and probably more useful, category for births that could be used in articles like 1993 Ramada Hotel drownings, where there's no obvious birth category, yet they show up in the report because of a common death year. Canadian   Paul  14:10, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
 * born and death categories should normally be added to an article about a single person. If there is e.g. a duo these categories can be moved to each person name redirect instead of having those article in the merged article. Merlissimo 20:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Oops, forgot I was having this discussion. So what about for something like 1993 Ramada Hotel drownings? Just remove Category:1993 deaths because no birth category is applicable/it is about multiple people? Canadian   Paul  15:31, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

No updates
I'm afraid that this hasn't updated in a while as it runs on toolserver and that computer is busy. More details at de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Merlissimo.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:36, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

1980 birth cat in the final section
For info and also posted on the bot-owner's talkpage:

For the section headed Articles without a born category there seems to be something that is ignoring articles with a birth category of 1980. For example, Adam Petty, Alicia Ross, Anastasia Blue, Amanda Hooper all are in this section, but have a birth cat of 1980. Can this be fixed? Thanks.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 20:12, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this was the problem: --Racklever (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Ahh, superb. Thanks RL.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 11:28, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:People declared dead in absentia‎
Is there any way that we could get Category:People declared dead in absentia‎ added to the list of "recognized" BLP categories? That would solve the Natalee Holloway problem and probably save a lot of drama in the future. Canadian  Paul  15:29, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

David Trosch under articles without a born cat
Can anyone see why this article keeps getting listed here? It looks OK to me?  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 14:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania?
If anyone active here is going to Wikimania please drop me an Email - I've had a submission accepted on this and need a presenter who will be there.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * User:CT Cooper has kindly agreed to represent us at Wikimania.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  06:03, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Template for living/possibly living articles


What do other users think of having a template created to help deal with the living and possibly living people that would be placed at the top of the article in question? Something simple, not too intrusive that states "This biography of a living person is shown as being deceased on x-language article. Please help to find reliable sources to confirm if this individual is alive or dead", or words to that affect.

Thanks.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 12:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's worth trying. Best case scenario, we'll be able to resolve parts of the current contradictions. Worst case, the template is useless and a mild annoyance. The good news though is that we can try it for a few months and check its effectiveness. Pichpich (talk) 18:06, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'll draw something up this weekend and give it a try.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 08:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, I've got the ball rolling on this - see the article for Adriana Serra. Any help with the template or hidden category would be appreciated. I've copied the list as it stands today, to alert the relevant projects too.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 15:10, 14 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Now tagged all the articles in the first section (excluding a couple I've fixed myself). As per my above comment, I've started to alert various projects, such as the actor project.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 17:53, 14 June 2014 (UTC)


 * And some very positive work from the football project. Wait to see the next update from Merlbot to see how many have gone from the first section.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 08:25, 15 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The Living People section has been reduced by 20 names from the last update!  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 13:19, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata
Does (or can) this report make use of Wikidata? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:28, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Andy, This report predates wikidata by some margin, I don't know if it has been rewritten to take advantage of Wikidata, other than the change to the way interwiki links work, but somehow I doubt it. As to whether it could, I'm not sure how quickly Wikidata sucks in updates from different wikipedias, but this report runs every 24 hours. I'm not sure how Wikidata would handle anomalies between Wikipedias, but we work on the basis that we only fix anomalies manually - we don't assume any one language version is more likely to be right than another. How would Wikidata resolve things when 1 version of wikipedia says someone is dead and 11 say otherwise? We would check the source cited by that one version, and with many such anomalies, yes the person has now died. But sometimes a quick google search and you find they have given a subsequent interview. Othertimes one wikipedia allows an unsourced assertion that someone is dead but we can't change this version because we can't find a reliable source. Then there are anomalies because EN says you are dead if you would otherwise be the oldest person alive, whilst some languages take a more realistic approach about the proverbial footballer who retired aged thirty, seventy years ago, and of whom naught more has been recorded. What we could benefit from is that this relies on having a year of death category, we have that for about 80 language wikipedias not for more than 200 others, and that includes some big ones like Dutch. So potentially Wikidata could find a lot more anomalies.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:00, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Well I have been moving quite a bit in and out of possibly living as of late
Yeah like I have found some I knew couldn't possibly be alive and people have helped afterwards when I put year of death missing. (Such as a author from the early 1900s, a screenwriter from the early 20s and even a guy who was listed as being in WW1 were listed as possibly living, some even under living people that didn't seem to add up!) I also put quite a bit from living people into here as of late. Don't feel like putting every one but it did take quite a bit of work and am still finding names!

Wgolf (talk) 21:31, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

How often does the bot remove the names that have been corrected?
As on possibly living there are a few that are now listed as dead on this Wikipedia. But I've not see the bot update the list in a while. Wgolf (talk) 03:55, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It was done daily, but it looks like the bot is now broken for good.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 09:09, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Aww thanks-that sucks, I would hate to do that manually. Well good luck editing then everyone, I've been finding so many lately to put out and others to put in. Which some are just plain odd on how old they be if they were alive that are possibly living, while others I've seen would be in there 50s are listed as possibly living all I can say is "are you sure? my parents are in there 60s and there alive and well!"

Wgolf (talk) 17:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's pretty crappy it's no longer updated. I might raise it at WP:VPT to see if any eggheads have a solution.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 17:46, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

the list has just been updated! :D  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 12:47, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Found someones dob and that he is living but on another wiki....
So after searching for about an hour I found Hal Gausman date of birth and on another site that he is alive (born in 1934). But then I looked on the German wiki and said he was born in 1917 and is dead now. Now I'm confused. Wgolf (talk) 18:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Changed to possibly living until I (or anyone) can get more info. (There is someone else who was nominated with him that was born in 1917 that is still alive though)

I did find someone who was in World War II whose birth/death is 1917-2003, either that is the same name or him. I don't know. Wgolf (talk) 18:49, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * By the way-I have came to the conclusion that it is very likely that these are 2 different people and the German wiki should be updated on that. For these reasons:

His long career, working at Disney, no mention at the Oscars of his death, you think with him dying in 2003 that there be some mention. (Granted the Oscars are odd at times at who they forget, but still) and I'm pretty sure Disney have some sort of record. Plus one place I found that he is listed as living was on a Disney blog site-which yes blog sites are not the best source, but still you never know. Wgolf (talk) 18:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)


 * -Can someone who knows German do something about the German link as it seems to be 2 different people, thanks. Wgolf (talk) 01:20, 29 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I've found some decent evidence that he died on 10 June 2003. Pichpich (talk) 02:07, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Now as for the DOB-that part is confusing, but at least part of it is solved! Wgolf (talk) 02:28, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Tried to add someone I found on shortest wiki's
This guy: Martin Mehkek, yeah having trouble though. Wgolf (talk) 01:19, 29 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Wgolf. There's no need to add the names manually to the list, as they'll be over-written when the bot does its next update. If they're in the relevant alive category on x wiki and dead one on here, then they'll pull through automatically.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 07:12, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * well he was last updated a while back so I figured I do that, I did add someone else also. There was some guy I found whose page was last updated in 2013 I think whose German (I think that was it) wiki said he died in the 70s but I didn't add him in, I could of put the BLP living dead tag though maybe. Wgolf (talk) 15:28, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Another article I just found on shortest wikis that it not listed on here
I just moved this guy I never heard of till now Hafiz Sabri Koçi to possibly living-the German wiki says he died in 2004, while another one did not have his death. But both said he died in 1921. Wgolf (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

José Manuel Rosano-died in 2007 according to the Spanish wiki
José Manuel Rosano-though not sure if he even qualifies for notability here. The Spanish wiki is also unreferenced, either way here! Wgolf (talk) 02:45, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I just put a AFD up for him as I'm not even sure if he is notable enough for here. Wgolf (talk) 02:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Yuri Skorzov-possibly living on here, listed as dead on German wiki
Yuri Skorzov. Wanted to point his guy out. Wgolf (talk) 18:19, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

And another one-Jack William Pithey
I was looking around for people born before 1905 listed as possibly living and found Jack William Pithey which I figured he couldn't be living most likely-anyway the Polish wiki says he died in 1987. Wgolf (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Another one listed as dead on another wiki.
Kiyonobu Murakami-died 12/24/1951 according to the Japanese wiki. Wgolf (talk) 05:49, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * also-Takeo Wakabayashi-died in 1937 according to the German wiki. Wgolf (talk) 05:55, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Sulo Leppänen-listed as dead on Finish wiki
Sulo Leppänen listed as dying in 2015. Wgolf (talk) 23:09, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Yet another one-Rachid Turki
Rachid Turki-listed as dead on the French wiki. Wgolf (talk) 05:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Another one-Tecla San Andres Ziga
Died in 1992 according to the Netherlands wiki. Wgolf (talk) 17:34, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Even more
Seems like someone needs to update tons of these! Dorothy Saunders-mentioned as dying in 2013 on the German wiki. Stefan Dembicki-mentioned as dying in 1985 on the French wiki. Wgolf (talk) 23:33, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * And another to add along with the 2 above I just put along with tons of others on this talk page: Lê Văn Kim-died in 1987 on the Vietnamese wiki. Wgolf (talk) 23:57, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * More: Clairvius Narcisse-died in 1994 according to the Spanish wiki. Antonio Flores (footballer)-died in 2001 according to the Spanish wiki. Enzo Cozzolini-died in 1962 according to the Italian wiki. Wgolf (talk) 00:09, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Alan Barrett (costume designer)-dead on the German wiki, possibly living on the English.
According to the German wiki-died in 1991 Alan Barrett (costume designer). Also has a dob on there-so yeah. Wgolf (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Andrés Martinez (athlete) listed as living on here and dead on the Spanish wiki
Here: Andrés Martinez (athlete). Wgolf (talk) 23:15, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Another one I found David Johansson (skier)-dead according to the Swedish wiki. Wgolf (talk) 01:14, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Different thresholds for presuming a person deceased
I noticed that some of the individuals listed would be extremely old if alive and are presumed deceased on other wikis (such as "Deaths in 20th century"). For example, the German version presumes a person is deceased if they would be approximately 108 or older, which is lower than our standard of 115: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Wikipedia:M%C3%B6glicherweise_lebende_Person

Should such individuals still be included here? EternalNomad (talk) 00:59, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Different language versions of Wikipedia have different cutoff ages for assuming old and or missing people are dead. In an ideal world we'd mark such anomalies on the list, otherwise people will keep rediscovering this.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  10:03, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata report
I've just run a report for "people with a date of death recorded in Wikidata but in category:Living people on enwiki", and to my surprise it turns out to have over 1300 entries. I've gone through a few and they all seem to be cases where the article was updated at some point with a death date, but the categories weren't corrected.

The query link (note, takes almost ten minutes to process!). Andrew Gray (talk) 00:17, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * - wow - that's great! Thanks for that.  To help others, I've ran that query (did take about 10 minutes), selected the output as Wiki and dumped it into a sandbox page on my Wikidata profile.   (and others) - feel free to take a look here. Not bothered what editing you do to that page, but note that I'll overwrite that info from time-to-time when the list is re-done.  If you can't find any sources for the date of death, tag the article with , per my last edit on Ramiro Navarro, for example.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 09:24, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I spent a bit of time picking off some articles at random, and they are not all cases of incorrect cross-wiki information. Quite a few have the date of death imported into Wikidata either using EN wiki as a source or having no source at all. In a couple of cases, the import happened after someone had made a false edit to the EN article (IE added an obviously false date of death). And in other cases, two unrelated articles that shared the same name across different languages were linked together. This is not a quick job, but something that needs a bit of time and care to go through.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 12:55, 24 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think we'll definitely pick out a good few oddities this way. I only spot-checked a dozen or two, so I may just have been lucky in not finding any problems :-)
 * I've noticed quite a few errors in the past where the situation seems to have been error/vandalism > copied into Persondata > article corrected, Persondata ignored > Persondata imported into WD > WD now disagrees with article. I wonder if some of these had the same problems. Still, at least they're easily identified as potentially-problematic cases... Andrew Gray (talk) 22:03, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Distressing
Re.

This template seems to have caused distress on a BLP. Sibghatullah_Mojaddedi was falsely reported as dead, earlier this year; that has been explained in the article since January. However, the template at the top worried at least one reader, who posted this.

I've removed the template from the article; I'm wondering if this should be monitored, or something. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 02:51, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The tag was added because they were showing as being deceased on another language version of WP. Ideally, that language WP would need correcting to prevent it being tagged again.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 08:30, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Sure, but, we can't rely on other wikipedias being correct. A great many of them are nowhere near as well-patrolled as en. If the same thing happens with a more famous person, this will create a hell of a fuss.
 * I mean, there's articles about this guy on over 20 wikis. I've had a look at some, and it's pretty hard to tell whether they have him as living or dead. I certainly can't speak the 20 languages to fix the problem.86.20.193.222 (talk) 20:41, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * BTW, I have now asked for the articles to be corrected on German and Spanish Wikipedia. French is OK, says he is alive. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 20:58, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * "If the same thing happens with a more famous person, this will create a hell of a fuss" - Actually, quite the opposite would happen.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 20:59, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you mean; I think if this system put a "DEAD?" template on Donald Trump or something, it might raise eyebrows. I guess that one is under PC though.
 * I'm not sure, realy; I'm just trying to do what I can, to avoid BLP distresses. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 21:15, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Is he showing as dead on another WP? No. Then it's a not an issue.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 21:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If that means it'll pop up again on enwiki, I think it's an issue. Maybe I'll post about it elsewhere; no worries. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 21:35, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm just trying to understand this process. Can you please tell me, why did you add to Sibghatullah Mojaddedi with this edit? Is it an automated process? Is is made because of the database report? When would it have been removed (if I had not removed it)? If he is 'dead' on one of the other wikis, will it be reinserted? Thanks. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 22:16, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I really can't answer an edit I made more than 5 months ago. Let it go.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 08:16, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we should MFD that template. Having a list of death anomalies is one thing, and over the years has quietly allowed us to fix lots of anomalies. But that template is being put in articles, it is insensitive and allows for vandalism in other Wikis to be mirrored here.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  10:07, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * If it causes "distress" to one article, then remove it from that article. In 99% cases, it's a genuine flag to say that X person is dead on another language wiki, but not on here. Fixing that reduced the BLP issues.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 10:14, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not easy to fix articles on 20+ different wikis in 20+ different languagesm, if that's what it takes to stop it from appearing. I've spent quite a while trying to do it for that one article.
 * I think I agree that it should be deleted, I'm a bit concerned abotu the lack-of-process. What if a user hijacks a small wiki and marks 100s of people as dead? en has no control over that, and can't even necessarily remove the cats.


 * I don't really want to "let it go" when it concerns marking the death of living people. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 14:31, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * "What if a user hijacks a small wiki and marks 100s of people as dead?" - They'll be reverted.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 14:47, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * English Wikipedia has no authority or control over such things. A wiki is, of course, not a reliable source. We should not display a prominent query about someone being dead on a BLP based on them. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * @Lugnuts. The list enabled us to reduce such anomalies, perhaps 90% of which were indeed that someone had died and we hadn't yet picked it up here. I'm not convinced that the template is needed, in fact I'm pretty sure it is superfluous. But it is disrespectful, and a BLP violation as it is by definition dubious information in an article. The problem with the living dead template is that we don't know in advance which articles it will cause distress on, certainly the minority where the person is not dead, and I suspect often when they are dead.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  19:06, 16 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The template has been around for years, used on hundreds, if not thousands of articles, with only one causing "distress". This has helped no end to fix BLP issues across projects, including unsourced incorrect information on EN. It's been removed from the one article that's caused issue. Get back to me when there are no other BLP issues on WP.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 19:19, 16 March 2017 (UTC)