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A few months ago I created this article using the entries in 1996#Deaths. I also added entries I considered to be missing. I've concerned myself with these deceased list pages for some time now and I came to realize that some kind of filtering was inevitable before adding entries. Adding everyone with a bio page on Wikipedia would lead to very long lists and distract from more notable entries. I do realize that the discussion what/who is notable is sensitive and ongoing. In that regard this discussion regarding the Years articles is useful. However, I encountered many, many entries that were just short stubs, orphans or redirects to non-bio articles.
So a few years ago I created some software that, based on a specific date, scans Wikipedia for bio's of persons who died on that date. The program looks in the infobox of the article for the date so having an infobox acted as a first filter. It also looked at article text size (excluding the text in the infobox and stated categories) as a second filter. The entries generated based on these conditions I added to the lists. I hardly ever removed an existing entry even if they did not have a citation and were hardly mentioned anywhere else in Wikipedia. This way I updated about 120 month lists, correcting many errors in lists and bio's during the process.
Although my additions never were reverted the filters I applied kept bothering me. Obviously there are many notable bio's without infoxboxes and on the other hand the correlation between article size and notablity is by no means 100%.
That's why I developed new software that also generated entries but applies new filters that are more sensible: I look at the number of links to the bio and at the number of other wiki's apart from this English wiki. I started re-processing some months (including this one) and so far I am very happy with the result. Of course I do realize that this way of filtering also is not perfect so evaluation of each new and existing entry will still happen. But new notable entries are found and added to the list articles and I only removed a few existing entries based on the new filtering conditions. Apparently the former filters were not totally useless after all. Also note that only entries without valid citations are removed. Mostly entries that I added myself in the past by the way. I would welcome feedback/ideas on this topic to further improve these lists. Cheers Mill 1 (talk) 21:46, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mill 1: That's all fine but some of the entries that were removed were clearly notable. I mean what about the George Huebner page? That's rated as a good article yet was taken out of the list? Similarly with Douglas Franklin Wright. Serial killers are by Wikipedia policy and definition notable and are allowed for inclusion on the site. I personally updated a lot of info in that article and it is definitely of a greater quality than some of the other entries that were kept on this list. Inexpiable (talk) 14:44, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inexpiable: I agee with you. As I said; the applied filter is not perfect so I will be more attentive evaluating entries. But every listed entry has a corresponding article on the site (and an item on Wikidata). No filter would be needed if everyone with a bio on Wikipedia would be listed. That would not be desirable and is the reason for this discussion. Mill 1 (talk) 07:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
