Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Death

Request for information on WP1.0 web toolEdit

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Category:Suicide in 2019Edit

Shouldn't Category:Suicide in 2019 include all the notable individuals who have died by suicide in 2019 so far?Zigzig20s (talk) 23:45, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Featured List candidate - List of cyclists with a cycling-related deathEdit

Discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of cyclists with a cycling-related death/archive1. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

"Committed" versus "died by"Edit

In English the preference has changed to use "died by suicide" instead of "committed suicide." I noticed that most of the suicide category pages such as American politicians who committed suicide, use the old language. Has there been any discussion about updating these categories to use the more accepted language? Wreckingballheart (talk) 11:37, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

For older subjects, when suicide was still a crime, isn't the older form more correct? Dies this English preference include all modern examples in jurisdictions where suicide is still a crime? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

The recommendation is due to the effect saying "committed" can have on people who are thinking about suicide or who want to talk about suicide. The recommendation is that committed should not be used, even when discussing historical suicides because of the influence language has on current attitudes around suicide. I would argue that all articles should say "died by suicide" and then if there is proof the person/their estate faced legal ramifications related to their suicide that information should be added on its own. That way Wikipedia can follow the recommendations of suicidologists while also maintaining accuracy. Here are a couple of sources about the language change: Source 1, source 2.Wreckingballheart (talk) 11:52, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I must have missed the discussion where the evidence, or at least advice, from suicideologists was presented, evaluated and !voted on. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

One of the article authors, Dr. Sally Spencer-Thomas is a well-known suicidologist. The resources on the Suicide Task Force page, Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide, Bloggingonsuicide.org, and Preventing Suicide: A Resource for Media Professionals, all specifically recommend saying "died by suicide" and against using "committed suicide". Wreckingballheart (talk) 12:13, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. Presumably none of these make explicit statements about historical suicides. Or perhaps these was implied, but have not yet been acted on here at Wikipedia? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can tell this isn't a topic that has been addressed on Wikipedia, which is why I posted. While it is a very niche topic, there are likely a few thousand pages on Wikipedia for people who have died by suicide, resulting in an unknown, but large, number of people seeing the phrase "committed suicide" each day. I believe it would be most responsible for Wikipedia articles and categories to avoid using "committed" as per the recommendations. Individual articles where criminal proceedings related to the suicide/attempted suicide are involved can be updated with that info. Like I said above, I think this would preserve the accuracy of articles while following the expert recommendations. Wreckingballheart (talk) 12:37, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Just to be clear, have the suicidologists given explicit advice about how historical suicide should be described? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:40, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

The recommendation to change the language is a blanket one. That being said, I'm not sure why you are so focused on historical suicides when that wasn't the original topic of discussion. My question is specifically about category names on Wikipedia, not individual pages. Wreckingballheart (talk) 03:51, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

There are category pages that don't use "committed" in their title, such as Male suicides and Suicides in Massachusetts. It seems to me that this is also a bit of a Wikipedia style issue, as there currently isn't consistency in naming the categories related to suicide. Wreckingballheart (talk) 04:05, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

"Died by suicide" is an incredibly awkward, linguistically inelegant way of describing death via suicide, and I would argue as a phrase is not fit for purpose for scholarly articles in an encyclopedia. Technically, you can't die by suicide, you die via suicide. So Cato the Younger did not die by suicide. He died by slicing opening his abdomen and ripping out his intestines by hand - via an act of suicide. There are better ways to describe this if we don't want to use the word committed. For instance: "Cato killed himself by...." Or "Cato died in an act of suicide when he..." Or "Cato suicided by..." Or "Cato took his own life by...". PS, I would have got consensus here before starting to make changes in existing articles. Oatley2112 (talk) 05:38, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@Wreckingballheart: Please don't take the lack of participation here as a sign of lack of opinion. This topic comes up routinely, usually resulting in edit-warring and page protection because someone comes along and wants to make this change. There are probably some less specific searches that would yield more hits, but this one is a start. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 05:48, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Note: Do see Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 17#RFC: Categories with committed suicide in title. It points to previous discussions about "committed suicide" versus "died by suicide" and is also the latest very extensive debate about the topic. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:39, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you, Wreckingballheart, that "committed" is not acceptable and that we should where possible use newer better language. Unfortunately a sizeable number of wikipedians disagree. It may be possible to start using the newer language in UK articles, especially for deaths after the 1968 act, but be aware that you may find strong push-back, especially if you attempt to introduce this language into American articles. I checked the CDC and while they have a list of "unacceptable terms" they don't include "committed" in that list, and they do use "committed" themselves sometimes. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/self-directed-violence-a.pdf DanBCDanBC (talk) 15:39, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

O. J. Simpson murder case articleEdit

It has gotten progressively worse in recent months. In this section, I stated, "The article should be careful to not include every little thing, or everything in excessive detail. This is per WP:DIARY and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Wikipedia is not meant to give a blow-by-blow/day-by-day account of the trial. It's meant to sufficiently summarize what happened." Despite this, the article continues to be expanded with any and everything by one editor in particular. Different types of issues abound. I took the article off my watchlist, and have occasionally checked back. Like I stated, worse and worse. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:31, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Should "Suicide in $COUNTRY" articles include a section detailing how that country defines suicide?Edit

There are lots of articles about individual countries, eg "Suicide in Ireland" or "suicide in Lithuania". Almost none of these articles include a description of how suicide is defined in those countries. This means readers are missing information. For example, in England the Office for National Statistics says "The [...] definition of suicide includes deaths from intentional self-harm (where a coroner has given a suicide conclusion or made it clear in the narrative conclusion that the deceased intended to kill themselves) and events of undetermined intent (mainly deaths where a coroner has given an open conclusion) in people aged 15 and over.", and also "In 2016, the suicide definition was revised to include deaths from intentional self-harm in children aged 10 to 14. Previously we did not include suicides in young children due to the very small numbers involved (see Table 3). However, after discussions with Public Health England and the constituent countries of the UK, it was decided that it was appropriate to include them. Deaths from an event of undetermined intent in 10- to- 14-year-olds are not included in these suicide statistics, because although for older teenagers and adults we assume that in these deaths the harm was self-inflicted, for younger children it is not clear whether this assumption is appropriate.". But in the US the CDC says "Death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with any intent to die as a result of the behavior." It can be seen that there's some difference between these two, causing an over-reporting in the UK and an under-reporting in the US. This means that statistics cannot be directly compared. This is important information for Wikipedia readers to have. I think all "suicide in X" articles should have a definition in them somewhere. DanBCDanBC (talk) 15:35, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree! Normal Op (talk) 03:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC)