Talk:Deaths of United States federal judges in active service

This article was nominated for deletion on 15 March 2022. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

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Further development[edit]

The following is copied from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States federal judges who died in active service. BD2412 T 21:23, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

...

@Ivanvector: There have, to this point, been 4,153 Article III judicial appointments. Of those fewer than 7% have made it to a 40 year mark. Regarding those who died in office, once I finish adding all of their appointed successors, I plan to color-code that field to indicate whether the death led to a change in the political party controlling appointment of the seat, and to use the data to generate graphs showing the tendency over time of the age and number of deaths in office to change. This data can also then be used to plug gaps in Wikidata content regarding these judges. BD2412 T 20:45, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please remember not to rely solely on colour to convey information (MOS:COLOUR)! Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:51, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

True. Perhaps an additional row, then, with something like "D → R" to indicate such a change. Cheers! BD2412 T 21:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ivanvector: I have created a column for party changes - see List of United States federal judges who died in active service (1920–1969) for the model. I also intend to add color, but I think this is sufficiently accessible. BD2412 T 20:50, 19 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have added color to the columns relative to the direction of party change. BD2412 T 22:35, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping. It looks pretty good to me, though I'm not an expert in accessibility I think having the information represented by text covers compliance with screen readers. I think the guideline recommends using daggers with explanatory text but I think what you did is self-explanatory. I also appreciate expanding on definitions of active service, I'm not American and that was a bit over my head (we don't elect judges in Canada). Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:44, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

AfD proposals[edit]

During the recent AfD regarding these lists, several proposals were raised with the intention of providing alternatives to deletion, should a consensus arise that these lists should not be included in their current form in mainspace. Although the discussion ended without consensus, and frankly yielded little hope for a consensus either way to develop in the future, these proposals included:

The scope of the lists could be limited to higher-level judges, such as only having Supreme Court justices, or only having those plus Court of Appeals judges.
The pages could be merged and moved. The content in the lede sections is sufficient to support a freestanding article at a title like Deaths of United States federal judges in active service. Such an article would expand upon the sources explaining how and why the death rate has fluctuated over time, and detailing the increased likelihood of confirmation battles or abolishment of seats following the death of a judge. The tables could be collapsed (as we often do for things like teams in sports tournaments), so that the information is still there if someone really wants to review it, but the focus of the article would be the text rather than the tables.
The content could be merged and redirected to a section of United States federal judge, which is currently a bit thin relative to the importance of that subject, again collapsing the tables so they take up little space in the article, but making the content available for those who want to review it.

Personally, I would prefer to keep all the judges on the list (since the data exists), but would not be averse to shifting the focus to the concept of the death of judges in office, and its unique logistical and political ramifications (ongoing cases needing to be quickly reassigned, the President and Congress having to act to fill the seat), and to collapsing the lists, so that no one sees them unless they are really looking for them. BD2412 T 18:42, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am inclined to just go ahead and do this, so there will not be further controversy over whether these lists should exist as lists. BD2412 T 00:37, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see you're already pretty deep into it and already moved the page, but I was going to say I think this would be a candidate for a featured list. Admittedly the only one I've worked on is List of national parks of Canada, but I think you're close with the format of introducing the topic's importance in the lede, and then displaying the data in lists. Personally I don't care for the collapsed format - I had read your note about collapsing them already but still had to think about why I was seeing empty lists on the page. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:55, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My thinking in collapsing them was precisely that it makes the focus of the article the substantive text, rather than the lists, the latter having drawn a surprising amount of opposition in the AfD. BD2412 T 21:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing is efficient, given the long list.

But very frustrating is that the sort function in the table for date of death sorts by month, not year. By year would be more useful, as would separate columns for age at death and date of death. 75.143.54.95 (talk) 13:09, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think those issues are fixable. The default is chronological order by date of death. I don't know why the table sorts by month; the names of the months are not even in the template. BD2412 T 15:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]