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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of General Slocum victims (2nd nomination)

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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 delete. Coredesat 06:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of General Slocum victims

[edit]
AfDs for this article:
List of General Slocum victims (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

This is a recreation of a previously deleted page - This page quite clearly violates WP:NOT. Furthermore, this page passed deletion previously and was recreated by an adminstrator outside of process, without rationale. Attempts to reach the administrator concerning his reasoning have not met with response. Attempted SPEEDY was removed. Djma12 (talk) 02:41, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

...List of victims of the Rock Springs massacre, List of victims of the 1913 Great Lakes storm. Tim Q. Wells (talk)
  • No, they had AfDs and were listed as No Consensus, and by default kept. This one HAD an AFD, and the consensus was DELETE. It was deleted, then recreated out of process. I have no personal interest in this article. I am simply against the random recreation of a previously deleted article outside of standard wiki protocal. Djma12 (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • No. The VA Tech article was Consensus Kept twice. This article was recreated based on the precedent of those consensus keeps. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 21:32Z
The list does not violate WP:MEMORIAL. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 03:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy delete per CSD G4. That the recreator is an admin has no bearing on the case. Deor (talk) 04:41, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy delete as well. What is new here? In any case, WP is not a directory or list-repository. Epthorn (talk) 07:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Who said it is? List of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre was AFD'd twice, and both results were a consensus to Keep. Clearly you and the community differ about what Wikipedia is. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 16:17Z
      • If you think one AFD determines what the community thinks, you must see a much more perfect system than I do. By your logic, what does this AfD and the previous ones on this topic indicate?Epthorn (talk) 17:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think two AFD consensus keeps is pretty definitive. If ever for the VA Tech article, there is a consensus to delete and keep deleted, then I would believe the tide has turned against lists of victims. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 18:07Z
  • Speedy delete per CSD G4, unless the recreating admin can demonstrate that the recreation followed proper procedure. Consensus on deletion has already been established. I'm not the admin who declined the speedy, but I did put a courtesy "hangon" note on the article to give the recreating admin time to explain, since his edit summary was malformed and suggested he may have attempted to link his rationale. The admin did not respond to my note although he has edited once since the note was left, possibly in reponse to the note below mine. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Vote as you like. I recreated based on the two consensus votes to Keep the VA Tech list of victims. I was going for content over bureaucracy. But whatever the community of AFD voters prefers is fine. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 16:17Z
      • Comment I can only guess (having not been involved in that AfD), that the Va Tech, and even the Titanic list is there because at least some of the individuals involved are notable, and have Wikipedia articles. Even Columbine has a few articles on individuals. Admittadly, some of that is sstrictly because those events were heavily covered by the modern news media, while the Slocumb was covered, though individual stories were either not likely as covered, or those stories have been buried by time. In any event, the only notable people on the Slocumb list are the two survivors. The list of the dead, tragedy that it was, was not a list of notable people as per WP:N. LonelyBeacon (talk) 16:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • So if I can find a professor who died on the Slocum, the whole list is legitimated? Or at the very least, if I find a semi-notable individual among the 1000 victims, and create an article for that individual, then the article is fine? — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 18:14Z
      • Comment I would not surprised if emotions play into this as well. Let's not pretend that wikipedia is a machine with parts that move in a certain way according to rules. Why do you think schools don't get deleted as do businesses? Epthorn (talk) 17:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree completely that part of the keep on some recent articles about more recent deaths (Va Tech) is emotion ... perhaps even the Titanic list has something to do with the film. I do not know. Also, I did say I was reaching for straws on why those other articles were kept. I was not agreeing with their being kept. To answer your question, no, even if a professor or actor or child of Abraham Lincoln were on the Slocum, I would not advocate keeping the list. For the record, as Mandsford notes below, they are not lacking notability because they were "blue collar people, who did nothing notable during their lifetimes". There are many people who died, ultimately, in the name of safety improvements. I see lists like this as very slippery slopes. Am I to take it that some where there is a list of WTC victims being constructed? How about tsunami victims who died in the name of better tsunami detection? Lists of the dead in the San Francisco earthquake, whose tragic death led to better improvement in building code? How about the list of the dead from Hiroshima who stand as symbols of nuclear war. Instead of creating a slippery slope, it is safe to say that we may already be there. LonelyBeacon (talk) 18:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • I find your argument unconvincing. You have basically stated that you are against all lists of victims, and have deemed others' votes as being of less value by saying they were based on emotion rather than sound rationale or precedent. But then you have gone on to ignore the two consensus Keeps in saying lists of victims are bad in general. This seems like a personal preference rather than a decision grounded in precedent. What remains true is that a list of victims has been consensus Kept twice. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 19:06Z
  • Comment. It's really more a question of assuming good faith and extending to you the courtesy of waiting to hear your reasoning. Now I have, I am more comfortable with my recommendation of speedy G4. This is without a doubt "A copy, by any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion, provided the copy is substantially identical to the deleted version and that any changes in the recreated page do not address the reasons for which the material was deleted". I am sympathetic to your idea that consensus may have changed and don't doubt you had the best of intentions, but we do have an ancillary process for proposing that pages be restored under such circumstances. I agree with Deor above that your adminship status should have no bearing on the case, but the fact is that it already has: if not for my presumption that you had worked within policy, I would have deleted it when I encountered the speedy tag per the guidelines at WP:CSD. Bureaucracy sometimes exists for a reason, and in this case it serves a purpose to ensure that all Wikipedians have equal status and that admins—aside from as necessary to ensure core policies are followed—do not have greater authority in forming article content than anybody else. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a perfectly reasonable point that may have gotten lost in the shuffle... Epthorn (talk) 19:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
User:Brian0918 If you wish to question my judgement, that is your choice. Now you have made a backhanded accusation that I am labeling others' choices as "less worthy". I consider your statements as bullying, and having dealt with bullies here before, I will not involve myself with them again. I am leaving this debate rather than continue down a road which appears to have become one about personality rather than content. I have stated my stance, and believe this article should be deleted. LonelyBeacon (talk) 00:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep WP:MEMORIAL does not apply to this, any more than listing Crispus Attucks in an article about the Boston Massacre would. The bar against memorials is explained as follows: "Memorials. Wikipedia is not the place to honor departed friends and relatives. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must be notable besides being fondly remembered." Given that the victims of the 1904 disaster are not remembered, fondly or otherwise, their notability is part of the historical data of a notable disaster. I'm sure there will be snobs out there who say, "these were blue collar people, who did nothing notable during their lifetimes". The evolution of safety is at the expense of unfortunate victims. Notability is not limited to people who happened to live in the 21st century. Mandsford (talk) 17:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mandsford (talk) 17:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we list all those people who died in automobile accidents before seatbelts were invented? Yes, a straw-man argument, I'll admit. Still, the disaster and not the people is the issue here. People should not be noted in an encyclopedia because they die, and only for that reason. Frankly, I would find it a disservice if someone listed me for such a reason. Note to self, include wikipedia stipulation in last will and testament...Epthorn (talk) 19:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a Great Car Crash of 1920, maybe. Automobile accidents in general, no. We are talking about historical events capable of having their own articles. The victims are part of the details of the historical event. Mentioning such victims is useful for historical and genealogical purposes. Whether discussions of historical events should include such specific details is a matter of opinion. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-12-10 19:29Z
  • Delete per WP:NOT#DIR. It is incorrect to claim that Wikipedia policy for keeping all victim lists is established by the two precedents cited. Mentioning the number and general characteristics of the victims suffices for historical purposes. A telephone-book like list of names serves no purpose. Millions of people died in airplane crashes, plagues, wars, steamboat explosions, famines, typhoons, earthquakes, and other mass casualty events. Most such lists of dead people have been deleted in AFDs. For the Virginia Tech victim list, the summary on the article's talk page says "The result of the discussion was Keep - No Consensus for deletion" The Columbine article AFD summary on the article's talk page says "This article was nominated for deletion on 18/4/2007. The result of the discussion was no consensus." It takes more than "No consensus" to establish a policy of keeping victim lists for otherwise non-notable people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps such victim lists could be trans-wikied to Wikisource. Then descendants of the unfortunate dead could have the pleasure of looking up their ancestors. But Wikipedia is not a genealogical database of non-notable people. Edison (talk) 04:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]


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.
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