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"Give me your tired, your poorly sourced..."

Should the current Talk:List of unusual deaths/Sourcing issues be used less as a holding tank or quarantine area and more as a gateway to the article itself? I’m not sure if wiki policy would allow this. I suppose the same could be gained from adding full article protection, but this seems a little heavy handed? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:52, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

... easier alternate plan... just dismantle and sell as scrap metal. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

attempted removals reverted

I attempted to remove a number of deaths that could in no way be considered rare, but I was reverted per BRD. I personally think those reversions illustrate the essential problem with this list.

One of the deaths I tried to revert was a family who was killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, where some chimney was blocked by a packet of chips. CO poisining causes roughly 200 deaths a year in the US from home heating equipment. While I don't have statistics on how many other chimneys were blocked, and by what those chimneys were blocked, death by CO is not rare. Is it somehow more unusual to have a chimney blocked by a bird's nest, or by a fallen piece of mortar, or by a buildup of creosate, or by a closed flue, than by a piece of garbage such as a packet of chips? How the hell can we decide that this one CO poisining death is worthy here, while the hundreds of others are not?

Another death was of a fellow who died after being crushed by an elephant in a battle. Elephants were used in warfare for almost 2000 years, and its quite clear that many soldiers were killed by being crushed by an elephant as they charged the front lines; this was one of the main tactical uses of elephants in warfare. So why is this particular death special? Perhaps it is an interesting story, as he thought the king was on board the elephant, but if we start to classify deaths and accidents where the person had a mistake impression before they died, the list would be endless.

I note that several of the sources are from the Fortean times books of strange deaths. Would it be acceptable to simply copy/paste that whole book here, since they are all strange? I think one of those books has around 375 deaths, so that would expand the article considerably.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:45, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Another one I tried to remove was this one: "1131: Crown Prince Philip of France died while riding through Paris, when his horse tripped over a black pig running out of a dung heap" - seriously? A horse riding accident? As I noted in the edit summary, there are hundreds or maybe more of these each year - we even have a category at Category:Deaths_by_horse-riding_accident. Why is this particular circumstance, tripping over a pig, more rare or unusual than any number of other reasons a horse might trip or a rider might fall? This is a classic example of trivia - people find it ironic that a great king was killed by a lowly pig, but in terms of a rare death there is nothing to establish it as such. It's just a king who died in an unfortunate accident.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:50, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem with your removals is (ironically enough, given the current AfD and talk page discussions) that they put your own original research on top of sources. I do not discuss the elephant one because indeed I couldn't find sources describing it as unusual now, so the removal is probably fine. About the chips-carbon-monoxide thing, the answer to "How the hell can we decide that this one CO poisining death is worthy here, while the hundreds of others are not?" is: sources. In this case, we have a source where the journalist does not put her/his judgement, but reports that the coroner and the court statement judged it "extraordinary", "coincidential and incredible" (see also this, that adds "unimaginable" to the adjective list). --cyclopiaspeak! 17:11, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

But that's the problem with the "unusual" criteria; because you are very unlikely to find sources that say "No, I disagree, this chips-packet-death happens all the time" - because people don't write articles like that; you have selection bias. There are around 7 billion people in the world today; around ~100 billion humans have lived on the planet; if we consider unusual to be 0.0001% of that number (i.e. one- one hundred thousandth of a percent, which is not the standard definition for unusual, but will do for our purposes), that gives us a list of 10,000 "unusual" deaths in the past few thousand years of written history. But we're nowhere near that standard; the standard of "unusual" here is "as a coroner in the small town of X, I've personally never seen this in my 30 years of practice" - but that makes is unusual for him, NOT unusual from a historical perspective. If you look at the medical literature, the word "unusual" is seen all the time - for example: "Unusual sudden cardiac death from an anomalous left coronary artery from the right sinus of Valsalva. Bishnoi RN, McMillan KN, Thompson WR."; here's another one: "Arch Med Sadowej Kryminol. 2013 Jan-Mar;63(1):15-20. [An unusual case of suicidal carbon monoxide poisoning committed using a portable barbecue grill]." - in fact, many medical articles are written about things the doctors in question found unusual. If we started to mine pubmed and added every single "unusual" case that resulted in death, we would have literally thousands upon thousands more entries, all just from pubmed (and that's a much more reliable source than fortean times). If we then added bizarre or strange or ironic or any of the other synonyms, and then started on those same synonyms in Chinese and Hindi, we could get many thousands more. If we started adding all of the "unusual" sources from the various books cited, that would add hundreds or maybe thousands more. Such a list is unmanageable in it's current state.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
For further examples on CO poisining, this was from 3 minutes of googling:
  • Some Unusual Toxicological Aspects of Two Carbon Monoxide Deaths; Mary J. Gretney1, R.C. Ginger1, C.M. Bullivant2
  • A death in a stationary vehicle whilst idling: unusual carbon monoxide poisoning by exhaust gases; Motoki Osawaa
  • An Unusual Case of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning;Pierre L. Auger, Benoît Levesque, Richard Martel, Henri Prud'homme, David Bellemare, Claude Barbeau, Pierre Lachance and Marc Rhainds;Environmental Health Perspectives;Vol. 107, No. 7 (Jul., 1999), pp. 603-605
  • Unusual Presentation of Death Due to Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: A Report of Two Cases;American Journal of Forensic Medicine & Pathology:June 1997 - Volume 18 - Issue 2 - pp 181-184;Ruszkiewicz, Andrew M.D.; de Boer, Bastiaan F.R.C.P.A.; Robertson, Shelley F.R.C.P.A.
  • JForensicSci,July 2005, Vol. 50, No. 4;Anny Sauvageau,Suicide by Inhalation of Carbon Monoxide in a Residential Fire: "We present here the unusual case of an adult female who committed suicide by waiting in the living room after setting fire to her bedroom"
Shall we add them all to the list? We could start a whole section JUST about UNUSUAL CO poisining cases - in fact we could probably start a whole list. I am ust scratching the surface, of literature that is easily accessible, and focused on a very particular cause of death. If we started looking at other causes of death - horse riding accidents, lightning strikes, animal attacks, disease, execution, etc, there would be thousands upon thousands of deaths we could add to this list based on the "unusual" criteria alone. I mean, just in the area of disease, there is a mountain of literature on "unique" cases/causes of death from various disease progressions - here is just one example: "BACKGROUND: Clostridium difficile is the major cause of nosocomial antibiotic-associated diarrhoea with the potential risk of progressing to severe clinical outcomes including death. It is not unusual for Clostridium difficile infection to progress to complications of toxic megacolon, bowel perforation and even Gram-negative sepsis following pathological changes in the intestinal mucosa. These complications are however less commonly seen in community-acquired Clostridium difficile infection than in hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infection. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first case of community-acquired Clostridium difficile infection of its type seen in Jamaica." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23815405. So, according to a rather RS, which is researchers/epidemiologists in Jamaica, this is the first cases they know of of this type of infection that has killed someone in Jamaica. Shall we add it to the list? Here's another one: "J Forensic Leg Med. 2013 Jul;20(5):537-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jflm.2013.02.006. Epub 2013 Feb 28. An unusual case of smothering by a medical nebulizer." Oh my god, I could just go on and one but I won't...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:47, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
What you write seems evidence in favour of the article and the criteria. You found medical reports on unusual deaths. That's excellent! It means the topic is indeed highly notable and requires our attention. Now, if the bewildering number of unusual cases is the problem, we could stick to episodes cited in multiple RS, for example. But after all we're not asked to be exhaustive in our selection. The selection bias issue is unclear to me: or better, I fully understand what you mean, but I don't understand how it is significant: after all, for example, when we discuss notability we don't ask for sources explicitly saying "This topic is irrelevant, just ignore it." to have a fair and balanced debate. --cyclopiaspeak! 17:59, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
No, Cyclopeia, it's not in favor of the criteria - I'm pointing out how the criteria lead to absurdity. Did you know that "unusual" deaths are reportable to public health authorities and the police? According to tthis paper, there were over 2100 "unusual" reported cases in Korea, in 1997, alone. It's not about "multiple sources" calling something unusual, that's not going to fix the problem. The problem is volume - the word "unusual" is far too flexible. If we had a statistical metric, like "Causes of death that had heretofore never been documented" or "causes of death that affect less than a billionth of the population, that could be an interesting list. But unusual? With millions upon millions of deaths every year, there are thousands upon thousands of those deaths which are deemed "unusual" by someone, somewhere. It's simply not encyclopedic to try to list them, and having a list of a few hundred suggests that this is all there is, which is even worse, or suggests that people rarely die from CO poisining or falling off their horse, which is also bullshit.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:13, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
ZOMG, I can't stop. How about this one - shall we add it? "Unusual homicide by air gun with pellet embolisation;Paul M. Ng’walali;Department of Forensic Medicine, Kumamoto University School of Medicine, 2-2-1 Honjyo, Kumamoto 860-0811, Japan; Forensic Science International; Volume 124, Issue 1, 15 December 2001, Pages 17–21" - this is the story of a woman who was shot in the heart, and dies. Not unusual, right? But in this case, she was shot with a pellet gun, and this case demonstrates pellet embolization (whatever that means). These authors found it unusual, so, shall we add it? Or another one from Japan, a poor fellow who died in a car accident, but what was "unusual" according to our RS is that a gear stick went into his head: "2. An Unusual Death due to the Impalement of a Gear Stick into the Brain Stem through the Nasal Cavity";Hideki Nozawa;Med Sci Law April 2005 vol. 45 no. 2 176-178." - or does this death lack the necessary irony for inclusion? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:03, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
I'd say that since they're sourced as "unusual deaths" by medical journals, they excellently qualify for inclusion, and I'm baffled that you think otherwise. --cyclopiaspeak! 18:11, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Then you should read more medical journals - especially the forensic ones, whose main job is to report on these "unusual" cases. Do you really think people will be interested in a collection of what medical researchers think is an "interesting" or "unusual" cause of death? If so, get ready as we could easily add thousands.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:16, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It doesn't have to be rare, just unusual. How often does a King of France(co-ruled with his father) have a pig jump out of a pile of dung and make his horse fall, injuring him in the process and leading to his death? That is rather unusual. List each item individually in its own section and discuss it. Dream Focus 18:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
How often does a guy named John, who is married to a girl named Bridget, run into a tree on the same day that his brother graduated from high school. That NEVER happens! Dream Focus, every death is unique, just b/c you're a king doesn't make your death more special than anyone else.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:05, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Which deaths are considered worthy of inclusion on the list can be decided by consensus formed on the talk page. This is something reported throughout history, and taught in history books in that nation. Of course its notable enough among all the unusual deaths in the world, to be included on this Wikipedia list. Dream Focus 18:22, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Ever heard of WP:OR? Wikipedia editors making a determination of "unusualness" is pretty much absolutly acceptable. and it is a clear violation of WP:LISTN which requires objective criteria. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:26, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Reliable sources call many things unusual. We then make editorial decisions on which of these to include. Dream Focus 18:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
But what are the editorial criteria? You seem to be saying, a somewhat unusual death of a particularly rare type of person (e.g. a King of France) is always relevant here. OTOH, a very unusual death of a particularly ordinary person may not pass muster. In what way is this NPOV? In addition, your theory of "consensus formed on talk pages" goes against the whole point of the list, which, it is claimed, is based on RS calling a death UNUSUAL. If I add 1,000 deaths from medical journals tomorrow that are called "unusual", will you revert them? In 5 minutes I found 5 separate "unusual" carbon monoxide deaths, and with a days work I could likely find 100 more - just for carbon monoxide. In what way is this useful to the reader? But if you say, 100 CO deaths is not useful, how do we trim it down? What are the criteria to get to the REALLY interesting/unusual ones? Is it publication by the Fortean times, or some random weblog, or some newspaper on a slow day?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:53, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, what's with the picture?

The leading causes of death globally are now diseases of the circulation and lungs.[1] The list below highlights some of the more unusual causes of death in history.

Can we get an agreement on this?--cyclopiaspeak! 16:44, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it should be removed. The WHO source does not talk about strange or unusual deaths, and I didn't see any of the sources for unusual deaths citing the WHO source; indeed, several of the deaths on our list are on this WHO list of common causes of death! --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:47, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
That is entirely irrelevant. The point of the image is to provide context. --cyclopiaspeak! 17:04, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Per [1], accidental deaths are within the top 15, and accidental poisoning is the most prevalent. Several of the entries discuss accidental poisoning; thus rather than provide context, it only serves to confuse, especially since the criteria seem to favor "circumstance" over "means" of death - e.g. ordinary means of death with interesting "circumstances" = inclusion on the list. As such, a list of common causes of death is useless here, and doesn't illuminate.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:08, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
That is a fair point. I'd prefer to keep the image and change the caption, however, perhaps. --cyclopiaspeak! 18:03, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
This cannot be used to provide "context" without violation of WP:OR Its right there in print "Source material should be carefully summarized or rephrased without changing its meaning or implication. Take care not to go beyond what is expressed in the sources, or to use them in ways inconsistent with the intention of the source, such as using material out of context." The WHO is SOLELY talking about common sources of death and to use that to make a comparison to unusual deaths is about as out of context as one could get. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:06, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

WHO must know a lot about the interpetation of mortality statistics. Has anyone asked them what their definition is of "unusual death"? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:53, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I am pretty sure WHO has better things to think about than the unique, rare or very unusual - their mandate is the far other end of the spectrum, that which impacts the masses.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:12, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for settling that one for us so quickly, T-PROD. So they have no concept of what "unusual" means, e.g. [2], [3], [4]? Martinevans123 (talk) 00:26, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
When WHO starts marshaling resources to combat an upcoming pandemic of people choking on toothpicks, give me a call. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:33, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Are there any unusual diseases? Or are they all equally common? (If you find out, could you possibly give WHO a call? Thanks). Martinevans123 (talk) 00:40, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Martin, your rhetorical questioning style is becoming irritating. My assumption is that the WHO uses "unusual death" in the same way a coroner's office would use unusual death - a death for causes not commonly or regularly seen - they have a practical reason to look into unusual deaths - for the coroner, because it may be a crime or an event of public health significance - and for WHO, it's to understand causes of death and novel ones are interesting because they may suggest an event of public health significance. They would not categorize "chips packet wedged in a chimney leading to CO poisining" to be unusual, it would simply be called a freak accident. When they think of unusual, they are thinking of diseases of unknown origin, novel viruses, novel reactions to environmental contaminants, or new zoönosis. This is quite different from the definition being used by bored journalists when they apply "unusual" or "bizarre" as an adjective to entries on this list - they would probably find it extremely lame to call falling off a horse or being killed by a war elephant during a war in which elephants were used to attack troops as 'unusual'.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:18, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Apologies if my style falls short of your expectations, Obi-Wan. But that's a real question, in my view pertinent to the potential content of this article, not a rhetorical one. (If Red Pen wants to place a rhetorical call, however, I wont try and stop him). Sorry for any confusion. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
That is a lovely exercise of "what I think someone else would think of this", but honestly I prefer to evaluate editorial decisions on something a bit more solid than your hypotheses on what the WHO has in their heads. Also I'm a bit perplexed by the fact that "a freak accident" would not be considered "unusual" as well. --cyclopiaspeak! 15:21, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
This is not a hypothesis, this is based on my having read a lot of literature on public health, epidemiology, and knowing personally a number of people who do this work at the WHO and with other institutions, but whatever, believe what you want to believe. I think you should ask WHO if you're so curious what criteria they use to determine an "unusual" death. There are "freak" accidents all the time, but for a public health agency, there isn't a lot they can do to prevent such freak accidents; they are much more concerned with strengthening road safety laws for example to reduce overall mortality from traffic accidents, than worrying about what happens to fellows who run out into the middle of a Formula 1 race.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
this is based on my having read a lot of literature on public health, epidemiology, and knowing personally a number of people who do this work at the WHO and with other institutions - I hope you never go to lecture anyone about original research here on WP. Anyway, the point is that I am not curious about the criteria they use to determine a usual or unusual death. I am about following sources, just that. It is you that seem to constantly put your own personal anecdotes, research or opinions above what sources say. That is not going to be constructive, because we can all here opine on what the WHO thinks, or how do the books decide what is unusual or not, and have a lot of jolly fun, but this is not a forum. Now, can we go back and sticking at what sources say? --cyclopiaspeak! 15:44, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, please tell me, what do the various "unusual" deaths sources say about how they determine whether a death is unusual or not.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:51, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Why should we care? You and a couple other editors seem to be obsessed about how the sources arrive at this conclusion. That's not our job. Do we second guess film critics before including entries in List of films considered the best or List of films considered the worst? All that matters in this context is that the sources actually do such an assessment. --cyclopiaspeak! 16:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Apples and oranges. Film critics do one thing, all day long - look at films. The films on those lists are those which are mentioned by multiple (e.g. often upwards of 5 or more) separate sources, who are usually professional film critics, as being "good" or "bad"- OTOH, the entries in this list, it suffices to have one journalist who themselves are not experts on mortality statistics to claim that a death is simply "unusual" or "bizarre" for it to be allowed on the list. Yes, I do care how sources come to the conclusion that a death is unusual, because if we put together the intersection of all deaths considered unusual by all sources, the result is meaningless to the reader. Do you really think the reader will enjoy reading about 5 different carbon monoxide deaths, and 100 different heart attacks where some weird thing happened that some cardiologist thinks is interesting? The subjectivity of unusual here is much WORSE, and much broader, than the subjectivity of "good" or "bad" films.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
We use journalists' words for a lot of content here about things on which such journalists are not necessarily experts (indeed, they are often not experts on any single topic) -I don't see why here things should be different. But then, one could concede that journalists do not have PhDs in Bizarre Event Studies, and thus remove news as RS for the article. Okay, let's assume it for a moment. Then we could however deal with sources written by people who, to paraphrase your words, do one thing, all day long - study and assess things that kill people. And suddenly such sources are dismissed with "Do you really think the reader will enjoy [...] some weird thing happened that some cardiologist thinks is interesting?". Apart from the fact that yes, I kind of think that - two questions: (1)Why should we dismiss a kind of source (news) that we regularly use for tons of other content? (2)If things that cardiologists find interesting are boring for everyone else, why don't you go and ask for deletion of every vaguely boring article? Here, I wrote this thing some time ago, that probably is terribly boring for anyone who is not interested in invertebrate paleontology. Please, do the right thing and bring it to AfD with the grounds it fails WP:INTERESTINGFOROBIWANKENOBI.--cyclopiaspeak! 19:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
We regularly dismiss what would be considered a reliable source in one instance as not being a reliable source in another instance. "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the WP article and is an appropriate source for that content.". -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:43, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Absolutely. But why should they be unreliable in this case? Are news sources unreliable on their own opinions? Because that's what this is about. --cyclopiaspeak! 19:56, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
if you can show the reporter has some type of background that would qualify their opinion on calling a death "unusual" then the reliability issue would not be there. However, I will quite firmly state that there is no reason to believe that any significant percentage of reporters has that qualification and that any exceptions would need to be made individually with evidence that proves the credentials of the specific reporter. Even if you want to allow them the "reliability of their own opinion" then you have stepped into the WP:UNDUE land of giving extreme overvalue to a single person's opinion who has no expertise in the area of that opinion. We do not use man on the street opinions for reviews of movies because the man on the street has no expertise in the area. We do not use Johnny Reporters offhand use of "unusual death" because Johnny Reporter has no expertise in identifying "unusual deaths" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:05, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Can you explain me then exactly what kind of things should we source to reporters? Because according to your logic, "almost nothing" is the answer, except perhaps information on the very job of being a reporter. We use reporters to source politics, yet they are not political scientists; we use reporters to source catastrophic natural events, yet they're not seismologists or meteorologists; and so on. Granted, there are cases where we dismiss or discourage news sources, because it is well known that for some specific things they're unreliable (see WP:MEDRS). But do we have here a sound reason to think that news sources are categorically unreliable on this topic? --cyclopiaspeak! 20:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Reporters on a political beat have experience on political matters. Reporters on the entertainment industry or finance business world have experience on the entertainment industry or finance world. Reporters off handedly using the term "unusual death" do not have experience on "unusual deaths". -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:26, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
If on-the-job experience is what matters, reporters also probably see tons of police reports, press releases on the death of someone etc. and as such I'd say they're more than qualified to recognize if a death happens to be unusual. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:48, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
This. TRPoD is exactly right here; we should dismiss news sources if we think their assertion of "unusual" is not encyclopedic or based on any statistical analysis of "unusualness"; additionally, if we created a list, say of unusual myocardial infarctions, that list alone would have at least 1000 cases by my rough estimate; if we were to add other "unusual" medical cases as per the literature that resulted in death, we would have many thousands - this would fail WP:NOT - as wikipedia is not intended to contain indiscriminate lists of information, even if that information can be sourced. We could have, in the biography for an actress, an assertion that this actress has regularly been voted the most beautiful woman in the world, but to create a list of List of beautiful women would not be acceptable. The List of women with large breasts was deleted here, and other such lists have also regularly gone under the knife. Ultimately, "unusual" casts too broad a net, and the definitions of same are too varied to be encyclopedic.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:54, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) WP:OR is not allowed for any content that appears in the article. We are perfectly free to do our personal analysis and judgement to assess whether content belongs in the article, otherwise we would not be able to apply WP:UNDUE. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Sure thing -I wasn't meaning he was actually violating policies. But on one hand we have sources which write stuff, and on the other we have some editor's handwaving based on "I have a friend who works there". Pardon me if I prefer to stick to the former. --cyclopiaspeak! 16:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't responding to you, I was responding to Martin who asked what WHO's definition of unusual death was; since they haven't published the same, I gave an informed answer, and your jumping all over me claiming OR is just insulting.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:26, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The image should stay unless and until we find a better lead image. It provides several functions
  1. Some statistical context as background
  2. A reference to the WHO which has lots more stats and trends about common and uncommon causes of death
  3. A link to the sister list of causes of death by rate

I have given some thought to suitable lead images. The only other idea I have is a collage. Warden (talk) 18:09, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Someone is suggesting that a chart showing the most common reason for deaths is relevant to an article about unusual deaths. Would that someone care to explain to the rest of us how that works? Britmax (talk) 18:48, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

"Hello reader, that is what happens usually. This may help you put in context the following list of related things that instead happen quite unusually."--cyclopiaspeak! 19:29, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
and that is clearly not the intended context of the WHO report and thus not allowed by those things that for some reason you seem to think do not apply, called policies, specifically WP:OR. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Again? I have no problem at all with policies. I have problems with people who wikilawyer bizarrely by attributing policies the most nonsensical interpretations. The "out of context" words, in the policy you quote, are a wikilink to this interesting article. Let's read what it means: The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.. Now, what "distortion of its intended meaning" is happening here? Are we using the graph to intend something that the WHO did not intend? Not at all. The WHO intended to present the most usual causes of death. The graph is there -gasp!- to present the most usual causes of death. To provide context to the reader. Your idea that we should provide a reliable source that specifically connects the WHO data directly to individual unusual deaths. is not supported by any policy. Providing a simple neutral context is not original research: there is nothing originally researched here, there is no synthesis to reach a conclusion, nothing at all. --cyclopiaspeak! 19:47, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
So you contend that WHO's intended context of presenting current common methods of death is to highlight or put into context individual uncommon deaths from antiquity to the present? now you are not only refusing to follow pesky policies, you are showing signs of WP:COMPETENCE issues. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:52, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'm beginning to have WP:COMPETENCE suspects on yourself as well, given that (1)you keep ignoring the actual meaning of the policy that the policy itself links and that I quoted above and (2)following your bizarre definition of "out of context" we should for example remove everything sourced to anything before 1990's, given that surely nobody of these sources intended being included in the context of an electronic, crowdsourced encyclopedia that people read with computers. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:02, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
The picture is misleading, as it suggests, incorrectly, that inclusion on the list is based on the unusualness of the cause of death compared to usual causes of death. however, we have on the list several deaths for example including accidents, that are described by one source or another as unusual, but which are considered common by the WHO. The picture only serves to mislead the reader and suggest a statistical rigor that is not present. WP:OR says " Take care not to go beyond what is expressed in the sources, or to use them in ways inconsistent with the intention of the source, such as using material out of context." - by adding the WHO graph here, we are using that material out of context, by suggesting that this list is somehow the opposite of the WHO list, and was developed using the same statistical rigor that the WHO employed in developing that graph.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:58, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
This is a reasonable comment instead. You see, Red Pen, is not that hard. Point taken, this reasoning I can agree with. --cyclopiaspeak! 20:02, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  • For an analogous case, see list of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. That list is focussed upon exceptional cases - scientists who disagree with the general consensus. The lead image for that list is a histogram showing the majority view in a statistical way. This provides good context and background and this is felt to be important because, if the reader only sees the exceptional cases, they may be given a distorted view of the overall situation. The same seems to apply in our case. If we only list and show the bizarre cases, the reader may come away with an unbalanced view. By showing the main causes of death too, some perspective is maintained. Warden (talk) 10:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
its not analogous at all. the content about global warming deniers was created in the context of showing the difference between the mainstream science and the fringe deniers. the WHO data and presentation was in context ONLY of most common. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:59, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Monkeys

Have you noticed how many monkey-related deaths there are on this list? There's almost too many to be construed "unusual" pbp 17:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

and deaths by guns and poisons. but, hey, if you put enough qualifiers on it (on a Tuesday at 3:15 when the victim was wearing blue and the song Honey Pie by the Beatles was playing), every death will become "unique" . -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
  • There are only two different entries involving monkeys. Dream Focus 23:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
    Huh...coulda sworn there were more. Two seems fair, three would be excessive pbp 23:51, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
    And how we choose which ones belong and which not? This is an entirely arbitrary judgement (ironically enough, isn't that what you disliked of this list?). Again, I would say that we just report what sources say. If this means we have 200 monkey death, so be it -we can put them in a subsection or split the list.--cyclopiaspeak! 00:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I would reject PBP's personal opinions over what is reported in reliable sources regarding the frequency and circumstances of deaths involving monkeys. However, if he was able to spare 10 hours of his time to research the literature, that may provide some assistance.--Milowent • hasspoken 00:46, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Murder

I wonder could we examine this edit? How common, as a percentage, is murder a cause of death? If a murder is itself unusual, then this makes the death more unusual? Or do we simply just use more than one WP:RS that describe the death as "usual" (whether or not it's proven to be murder)? There is a similar discussion to be had, perhaps, over accidental deaths of various types. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

These aren't just regular murders. These are unusual. And there was never any consensus to say you need more than one RS to prove something was unusual, nor is that a requirement for any information anywhere in all of Wikipedia. Dream Focus 16:31, 6 November 2013 (UTC)


I think the only murders that should be admitted have to be very rare Example : 2013: In china , a woman killed a shopkeeper by squeezing of the testicles over a parking spot JohnWilsone (talk) 14:42, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Nowhere in Wikipedia does something need more than one reliable source to prove it

  • Was there ever a discussion to add the nonsense about multiple sources required to the article to begin with? The editor who put it there has reverted my altering of it. [5] Everyone has just ignored that since you can see just one source for most entries. Why would we make this article different than all other Wikipedia articles, where one reliable source is enough for any big of information to exist? Dream Focus 16:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
no where else on Wikipedia is the inclusion criteria so subjective as "unusual" . Multiple sources help show that we are not giving undue credence to a single individual's personal interpretation of "unusual" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
that the criteria have been previously ignored by the same people who want to ignore even basic policy as WP:V and WP:OR is pretty irrelevant. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I understand where DF comes from, but I share some of TRPOD concerns. In my opinion, it depends on the sources: a single book or academic source can be fine IMHO, a single news source not necessarily. It is also not true that nowhere we need more than one RS -it depends on what is added, on the quality of sources, etc. As such both wordings (one vs multiple) seem problematic to me. In any case I humbly suggest everybody, in general, to refrain from both adding and removing entries before a consensus on inclusion criteria can be found. On both sides of this divide, we have to show we're capable to arrive to a compromise on this issue, and edit warring on both sides is not the way to arrive at this. Please all let's keep our cool. We had our flamewars on AfDs, DRVs, VPP etc. It's over. Let's start building from there. cyclopiaspeak! 16:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted back to the version before the recent edit war. Let's come to consensus here on the inclusion criteria, then update it. Until then, entries should not be removed from the list unless they are egregious violations of the current inclusion criteria.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:42, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The number of sources is unimportant. Sources are only needed for contested entries and then only to the extent that the facts then have adequate support. Per WP:CREEP, we should avoid constructing arbitrary rules which have no basis in policy or external sourcing. Warden (talk) 22:21, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
    • WP:CREEP is about creating policies and guidelines. It has nothing to do with structuring an appropriate encyclopedic article. 22:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
      • People seem to be trying to construct a special policy for this article. In fact, at Village pump, they have tried to construct several policies. The community's patience is being exhausted by this vexatious wiki-lawyering. We are here to write articles, not rules. See WP:NOTLAW and WP:IAR. Warden (talk) 22:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
And in order to write a list article with the completely ambiguous subject "unusual", there must be criteria so that people know what to include or not include. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
The criterion is that the death be unusual. That's it; that's all. The list has managed fine on this basis for 10 years now and has been praised as one of Wikipedia's top 10 articles. We're good and so do not need any more rules, thank you. Wikipedia already has far too many rules and they seem to result in more argument, not less. Warden (talk) 23:04, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
10 most memorable articles, not 10 best written articles. If you think this is ready for FA, you go right ahead, sir, but I think you'll find a rude awakening. Saying "it's unusual" is far too broad and far too ambiguous. We need to decide how many monkey deaths, or stabbing something up your rectum, or whatnot, is too many. I think one or two of each is enough, because a) it's redundant, and b) the unusuality of it become questionable. We certainly don't need every "unusual" death, or even every unusual death that acquired the verity of the printed word. (I agree with Pen's comment at 22:47) pbp 23:22, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
@Colonel Warden:, I don't like bureaucracy proliferation too, in general; yet in this case it is clear the article will forever be a bloody battleground unless we decide some minimum common rule. We can't merely rule a death as "unusual": while I have sympathy for this approach, it fails WP:OR, and there is no consensus to decide a WP:IAR exception. We have to follow sourcing, that is clear. How we do that is still to be decided. I disagree with Purplebackpack89 we however have explicitly to decide how many "monkey deaths" or deaths of any specific type we need. I think we should stick to the sources, to avoid ambiguity and to have as little points of contention as possible. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
@Purplebackpack89: This wouldn't be an FA, it would be an FL. We're not there yet as the edit-warring is an immediate fail, of course. But it is instructive to look at the other featured lists. At the top of the list of featured lists are tallest buildings starting with Albuquerque; Atlanta and Austin. Notice how those lists are based on an <adjective> <noun> format which Obi-Wan Kenobi is trying to forbid at village pump. Notice how they use the word tallest even though that word should strictly be reserved for just one building in each area — see superlative. Notice how the "tallest buildings" in these three places are greater than 135 feet, 400 feet and 180 feet respectively. There seems to be no consistency in these selections. One might even say that these are subjective criteria — the product of OR and other such wickedness. If this is the standards of featured lists, then it seems reasonable for us to aspire to join them. All we have to do is clean-up the prose, attend to our punctuation and resolve the edit-warring. To this end, and as this list is currently locked down and there's a fairly clear prohibition on further disruptive AFDs for a good long while, I suggest that RedPenofDoom, Obi-Wan Kenobi, PBP & co. head on over to those featured lists to share their wisdom with the authors of those lists, as they seem to be in need of some help. If this list here is left in the hands of constructive editors for a while, we might get some productive work done and then put the list forward for review to see how we're doing. How's that for a plan? The nay-sayers get some new worlds to conquer and the rest of us get to build rather than arguing. Warden (talk) 00:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
@Colonel Warden:: Ah, but there's a critical difference between the buildings and this. There's a correct answer as to whether a building is at least X feet tall; here, there aren't that kind of correct answers. Other featured articles are lists of Awards, where there is a right answer as to whether somebody won an award or not. Seeing as I have created an article, then got it all the way to FL, I feel as though I have at least a little familiarity with the FL concept pbp 02:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Warden, "tallest" is not subjective, it can be objectively determined - either a building is the tallest, or it isn't. It's mathematical. Not all adjectives are equally subjective. OTOH, Beautiful, unusual, weird, evil, good, bizarre, strange - these are all very much in the eye of the beholder. As I demonstrated rather many times, for example, "unusual" to a coroner (who sees a lot of deaths, and thus could be considered a very RS about unusuality in death) means something completely different to "unusual" for a Fortean times writer. Your idea of editors simply "agreeing" on what is unusual is ridiculous; if that were the case, then allow me to propose that 90% of the deaths on that list are not unusual, and I will forthwith delete them. What will happen? I will be reverted, and an argument will break out, and people will bring forth statistics and reliable sources and so on, and it will be a complete mess - do you really want to have a consensus-based argument for every entry in the list, and have no inclusion criteria whatsoever? that's a really stupid idea in my opinion.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Building heights are not exact: There are multiple complicating factors and deciding what to do about these requires editorial judgement and discretion. These factors include:
  1. There is only one "tallest" unless you have a tie. Having multiple entries in a list when some are clearly taller than others is silly.
  2. If you decide to have multiple tall buildings then you have to decide a cut-off and this seems to be quite arbitrary and inconsistent
  3. You have to decide what is a building. Tall structures include things like radio masts, observation platforms, dams and bridges. Is the Statue of Liberty a building?
  4. Some buildings are strange shapes so it's not clear where you measure them. For example, the Orbit. Some are so weird that I'm thinking we need a list of strange buildings — watch this space.
  5. The top and bottom of a building are debatable. At the top, you typically have spires, masts and other pointy bits which may or may not be considered part of the height. At the bottom, you have basements and undercrofts which may be split-level. For example, I attended a lecture at the Museum of London yesterday. That's part of the Barbican Estate which is where Wikimania will be next year. On exiting along a complex walkway, I looked over a parapet to take a picture of a string quartet playing in a medieval building at the centre. I looked down to see that directly below was a complex multi-level system of underpasses. I was glad that I didn't drop my bag as it would have been quite tricky to figure out how to get down there.
  6. Buildings can move. Some are designed to move like the London Eye. Other just move naturally due to thermal expansion of the steel frame which means that they are significantly taller in the summer than the winter.
  7. Some buildings are leaning over. There's the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, of course, but even Big Ben is slanted.
  8. Some buildings are taller on one side than the other because they are built on a steep slope. For example, Shell Mex House has an extra floor at the embankment end.
There's plenty more to quibble about but you guys didn't spot any of this. To claim that such a topic is so mathematically precise that there's an unambiguous correct answer is so utterly wrong that we seem to have a competence issue here. Warden (talk) 09:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
there are professional associations that have defined criteria for measuring buildings List_of_skyscrapers#Ranking_criteria_and_alternatives. There are no Professional Associations for the Studies of Unusual Deaths that have created a Ripleys scale for measurement of unusual deaths. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat is a good source for that topic. At least they grasp grammar enough to understand that their topic is "tall buildings". But notice that they can't agree themselves on how to measure their height and so use several different methods. The choice of method is therefore quite subjective. Q.E.D. Warden (talk) 12:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Warden, you're still missing the point. Yes, choosing amongst many methods to measure a building has some aspect of subjectivity, but once you've chosen a method, the answer is objective. OTOH, there is not some set of methods for deciding whether a death is unusual - there have been no methods proposed. All we have is a subjective opinion of an author at a particular point in time that a particular death was found 'unusual'. There's no objective answer to be had, because there's no scale (or scales to choose from) of 'unusualness'.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:29, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
You should try reading a page like CTBUH Height Criteria. This says plainly that "There is no absolute definition of what constitutes a 'tall building.'" And the following waffle about context, proportion and tall-building technology shows how subjective their thinking is. Warden (talk) 22:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
No, Warden, try reading it again. they recognize three ways of measuring height, and the wikipedia articles use those methods. Again, this comparison with tall buildings is really terrible, and you're just shooting yourself in the foot by continuing it here. Once you have determined a way of meausuring a building, the rest is just measurement. There are several reasonable ways of measuring a building height, but who cares? There aren't several ways of measuring 'unusual' - it can't be measured - we haven't seen any reliable sources that discuss in detail how 'unusual' is determined, so it's really apples and oranges.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm doing just fine, thank you. Causes of death can and are recorded, measured and ranked by authorities such as the WHO. I presented such statistics in the form of a diagram which provided useful context, just as the tall buildings people assess their height of their buildings against the context of the general surroundings. The unusual deaths are obviously the long tail of low frequency causes. The cut-off for low frequency is similar to the cut-off for "tall" when considering buildings. One determines this by looking for the cases that stick out from the general background. The exact cutoff will vary in sources, just as our cutoff for tall buildings varies from place to place. There's no difference. Warden (talk) 00:32, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and that graph was rejected. So, falling off a horse or CO poisoning are 'unusual'? Workers falling into machines at their workplaces is 'unusual'? Did you even read the evidence I provided below? I took specific examples from Fortean times, and I've provided evidence of the COMMONALITY of those causes of death. It feels like you're grasping at some sort of statistical definition of 'unusual', but sadly, the sources that support the deaths on this page have no idea of those statistics, and don't care about them anyway. I'm sorry but "low frequency causes" doesn't cut it - you happily expanded the entry on a Saint who was burned to death, as if that was somehow uncommon... sigh...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Still missing context, still missing context. How was the poor guy burned to death? Simple stake? I doubt it.--cyclopiaspeak! 09:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
This is really tiresome. He was roasted to death. There are many ways that fire has been used to kill people over the years - setting them on fire, putting them in 50-gallon drums covered in oil and set alight, surrounded by tires set alight, burned at the stake, thrown directly into a fire, boiled in pitch, fried in oil, and yes, roasted on a grill. The device was called a 'gridiron' - and while St. Lawrence is the most famous person to die this way, it was by no means an uncommon form of martyrdom, esp for Christian saints. See the following references:
  1. [7]
  2. [8]
  3. [9]
  4. [10]
  5. [11]
The last book, "Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs", identifies the following as having died on the gridiron: "Saints Laurence, Dulas, Eleutherius, Conon, Dorotheus, Macedonius, Theodulus, Tatian, and Peter." Another source tells of officers in Russia who were killed by the KGB by being slowly roasted. Another source notes that "death on a gridiron was by this time a common form of martyrdom". There was also a similar "iron chair" or "iron bed", which was used more or less in the same way.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Establish that Fortean times is not a reliable source for "unusual" or "strange" deaths

Some people are arguing that Fortean times should be considered a reliable source for "unusual" or "strange" deaths. I contest this vigorously, and will demonstrate it here. Let's start with one of their latest blogs. There are several cases:

  1. An 89-yo man has a heart attack at his wedding anniversary. There is nothing unusual about an 89-yo man dying from a heart attack; the time/location is unfortunate, but his death was not "unusual" - see Chances of Heart Attack Are Greatest on Birthday
  2. Next, a man goes to his car and shoots himself to death. Then his car is buried in snow. So, again, the death was by any standard, very usual. The only unfortunate thing was, they didn't find the body for a while b/c of snow. Who cares??
  3. Next "A Laotian man aged 38 lured his 24-year-old pregnant wife into a forest in northeast Xieng Khuang province on 3 January and killed her with an axe blow to the back." - ok, so a slightly crazy guy kills his pregnant wife. But it's "strange" because he killed her with an axe, in a forest, right? Whatever...
  4. Judson Newton, 43, went boating with friends off Jaw Beach and was swimming; eaten by a tiger shark. So what? Shark attacks happen constantly; there are 18 fatalities in 2011. Nothing unusual about this one.
  5. "A woman died after an allergic attack thought to have been triggered by a dentist’s mouthwash." now this one, especially if this was reported in the medical literature, would be a candidate.
  6. A guy who tried to commit suicide by hacking off his legs. Just do a search on "suicide" and "power tools" and you will find all manner of suicides using table saws, chainsaws, circular saws, etc; admittedly sawing with a hacksaw is harder, but someone using a tool from the garage to kill themselves is hardly unusual.

So, from one blog post from Fortean times, we can establish that 5 out of 6 deaths are not "unusual" by any reasonable criteria, and are not considered "unusual" enough to have been so noted in the medical or forensic literature. My perusal of the other deaths at Fortean times indicates this is a general trend. Unless someone has a good argument why Fortean times should be kept, we should eliminate it from consideration as a reliable source for unusual deaths.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Adding more dubious "strange" deaths, from "Strange deaths: more than 375 Freakish fatalities"
  1. Reports of 3 deaths from workers falling into equipment at a factory - a polymer mixing vat, a dough mixer, and a mincing machine. This study, just of Nigeria, found that 16.9% of deaths were associated with power-driven machinery (notably, the most common cause of death in factory deaths). [12]
  2. Another person who died at work while dressing a window; passers by thought he was a mannequin. Thus his manner of death was likely quite ordinary (e.g. heart attack? they don't say) - what is unusual is that people didn't realize he was dead. Thus, this is not an unusual death, it is perhaps an unusual discovery of death after the fact?
  3. Another account of a cook and waitress who worked together for many years; after she critiqued him, he came back and shot her dead. Sadly, people going off the rails and shooting people in their workplace has happened quite a lot. I'm not going to bother providing references, try google.
  4. A greenskeeper killed by a lawnmower. Try [13] to see that this happens rather frequently.
  5. A whole chapter on coincidences, where the son died in the same way as the father. Again, nothing about the deaths is unusual, or even the circumstances surrounding the deaths - the only reason it's reported by the FT is because some relative died in a similar fashion. For example, one story is of two men who washed ashore on the same day, and shared a birthday. Coincidence, but nothing "unusual" about their deaths per se.
  6. A young woman was washed out to sea and drowned, the next day her body washed ashore while her friends were laying a wreath. Again, the death was quite usual, what was unusual was that the body came back just at the wrong time - but that has nothing to do with the death itself.
  7. someone dropped a camera on some guys head off a bridge and it killed him. This happens unfortunately a fair amount, so much so that the Michigan legislature created more stringent penalties for dropping objects off bridges [14].
Again, that's just from the pages I was able to find on google. If you read through it, you can see there is no rigor applied to the deaths, they are all chosen because there's some wrinkle to the story that excites the morbid curiosity of readers. A fun book, a useful blog, and great reading - but not relevant to wikipedia, and completely indiscriminate. Fortean Times itself does not apply any rigorous selection criteria as far as I can tell - so they aren't for example compiling deaths called "unusual" - they are merely compiling deaths, and they are deciding they are "unusual" or "strange" - but I haven't seen any analysis of them as to how "common" the types of deaths they describe are. It's really willy-nilly-grab-bag stuff.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:05, 7 November 2013 (UTC)


I don't think anybody wants to use the Fortean Times blog as a source. Blogs usually are not WP:RS. Do the books merely copy the blog? All of it? If yes, then perhaps you have a case. --cyclopiaspeak! 19:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Fortean Times is not a reliable source for anything other than non promotional claims about themselves. Wikipedia should be seeking out the best sources, not the worst possible sources-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:29, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
it would be rather odd if the Fortean times, in compiling its books, did not source deaths from the blog. If you like I will check out the Fortean times book from the library and then debunk at least 20% of the deaths - is that sufficient to disqualify them? -Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Why the hell not? Have you even seen it, let alone read it in detail? The FT is pretty scrupulous in the reliability and objectivity of what they report: it may be insanity, but they will source it from where it originated and are clear to distinguish between their reported truth, verbatim reporting of other media and inventive lunacy.
Of course though, you have long made your real agenda for this article clear and the facts are merely to be cut to fit to support this. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
"Why the hell not?" - because of a thing called POLICY Wikipedia:NPOV#Good_research and guidelines on what are acceptable sources WP:RS and the fact that Fortean Times fails those in spades. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I've never hidden my "real agenda", Andy: to make certain that every item on the list is accurate, neutral, and scrupulously sourced. I recognize that a list titled List of unusual deaths where every item is accurate, neutral, and scrupulously sourced is going to be a fairly short list, and perhaps even an empty list. That's why I believe the article should be deleted. Others, however, seem certain that going through the tedious and laborious process of dealing with every item and source individually is a constructive use of everyone's time.—Kww(talk) 21:40, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support: I believe that deaths cited as "unusual" by the Fortean Times should not be on this list unless also sourced by something more reliable pbp 20:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Here are some quotes from the intro to "Strange Deaths: More than 373 Freakish Fatalities":
"Looking at our files, one could equally say: "A great many things are dying very strangely all the time" - enough for us to have accumulated a thick file of strange deaths in the shrot time since the first Fortean Times Books of Strange Deaths was published. This has been the msot popular of all our compilations, so it seems the time was right to gather this new material together and produce a sequel, and here it is. Drawing on Paul's published Stragen Death columns and the vast piles of clippings which we just don't have the room for in the mggazine, this compilation surveys the vast variety of unusual exist the Grim Reaper seems to have devised to inflict upon humanity to keep himself amused."
"We'd love to put our hand on our (still beating) hearts and say that every tale told herein is one hundred per cent true, but alas we cannot. Our stories have been culled from newspapers and magazines worldwide... so our information can only be as good as our sources. Alas, the standards of journalism are not consistent, and many papers are not above exaggerating for comic effect, recycling old stories with names and locations changed or removed, claiming hoary urgan legends as fact, or even making things up from scratch. Much as we would like to, we do not have the resources to follow up and verify every story we receive."
Based on those two lines alone, I think that is sufficient reason to not report what they say as true, because they themselves do not profess it to be true nor have they done any fact checking. They do note their sources apparently. The lines also establish that they source their book from the "blog", which can also be called a "column" (e.g. Strange Deaths).--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The Fortean Times typically reprints stories about strange deaths from newspapers. It cites its sources quite clearly and so is effectively a tertiary source for the facts which it presents about the particular deaths Its main value to us is when it characterises the deaths as strange. Insofar as it is a professional and independent publisher, its opinion is preferable to that of individual editors such as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Warden (talk) 22:35, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Did you even bother to read what the Fortean times says about their sourcing? It is reprinted above, for your convenience. They are explicitly disavowing any reliability of their reporting. They (obviously) do not have the same standards as wikipedia, and don't believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and admit that they reprint without following up or doing fact checking. Warden, above you have stated that disputes about whether a death is 'unusual' should be solved by consensus of editors on this page - are you thus saying that anyone but me could participate in those discussions? I am not rejecting deaths as unusual just because I believe them to be so - I have backed up those claims with academic sources and news searches that demonstrate the frequency of these events occurring. I suggest you bring the Fortean Times to the reliable sources notice board to see whether they consider it a reliable source or not for reporting on deaths, though you may be disappointed in the answer.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, that's just a standard and honest disclaimer. They report what news say. They are a secondary source. That's not different from most analogous sources do. --cyclopiaspeak! 23:06, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Cyclopedia, do you really want us to trot this to the RS notice board so that they can slap you with the biggest trout in the world or will you just drop the stick here? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:10, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
No, that's an explicit statement that they don't verify the accuracy of material.—Kww(talk) 23:11, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
If the source that the Fortean Times uses is reliable, verifiable, and describes the death as unusual, then the reliability of the Fortean Times is irrelevant: we can use the original source. If the original source did not describe the death as "unusual", the Fortean Times making an effort to editorialize is irrelevant: they themselves are not a reliable source, and we cannot rely on any characterization they may make.—Kww(talk) 23:11, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
+1 pbp 23:15, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Here is one example, from their "strange deaths" column: Bert and Doreen, who both died rather ordinary deaths, but died within hours of eachother (so, again, the death itself was rather normal, it was just a coincidence in the timing of the death that was interesting). The original source is here: [15] - no mention of the word strange, unusual, or any other synonyms. Evidence that Fortean times is applying its own criteria, which are clearly subjective, to make rag-bag trivia list. Here's another one, from another "strange deaths" column - a woman killed by a giraffe. Original source is here: [16] - no mention of strange or unusual.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • This discussion seems rather theoretical in that the Fortean Times does not currently seem to be used as a detailed citation for any particular entry. Two of their compilations published as books appear as "Further reading" and that seems fine for readers who want more. Warden (talk) 00:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
No, this is directly relevant, as one of the proposed inclusion criteria above is that any death meantioned in book which covers unusual deaths can be added. I'm hoping we can eliminate Fortean Times' published books from consideration here, to be used as a RS for any entry.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:44, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anyone else agrees with that. What are your proposed criteria? Editor consensus on a per-item basis? Let me start then by rejecting 90% of the deaths on this list as not unusual by my definition. I'm sure four or five other editors would agree. Without some sort of criteria for inclusion, this page will just become a worse battleground than it already is.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:09, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Obiwankenobi is right on this. The only way out of this hell is having some crystal-clear criteria to include/exclude things. Colonel Warden, it would be more helpful if you proposed some alternative criteria above, instead of keeping insisting we need none. That is not going to get consensus. --cyclopiaspeak! 09:20, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm rather hoping we can eliminate using the Fortean Times, Ripley's Believe it or Not, News of the Weird, and any periodical, book or column that specializes in categorizing things as "unusual" as a source as a futile waste of time, myself.—Kww(talk) 01:56, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • That would eliminate most of the sources in the article, and thus most entries, so you would've successfully destroyed most of the article. Dream Focus 09:11, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    Consensus was clear that it did not violate OR, etc. The closing administrator of the last AFD made that clear, and the overwhelming majority of the large people that participated in the deletion review supported that. Dream Focus 09:11, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    No, people were adamant that the best way to handle the article's problems with OR was to repair it entry by entry. It's certainly true that an accurate, well-sourced, and neutral "List of unusual deaths" will be empty or nearly so, but that isn't "destroying" the article: that's repairing it in the slow, tedious, and laborious way that has been demanded of us.—Kww(talk) 14:26, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    The closing administrator said [17] "To the point that this list is subjective OR: It isn't, as long as the items in the list are referenced to sources calling the deaths unusual. If there are items in the list where this is not the case, they should be fixed if possible and removed if not." Dream Focus 14:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    If you want to go ask Coffee to clarify that he only meant reliable sources, feel free. I suspect you know the answer to that question without asking, though.—Kww(talk) 15:25, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Allow books only as a 2nd source for when we need more than one source. There is a case for the FT alone not being reliable enough. Blogs should definitely be rejected. However, in cases where the criteria will require at least two sources then we can use the events that made it to the books, since we have two independent judgements on the event, and a modicum of editorial judgement on compiling the book has been done. --cyclopiaspeak! 09:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Since all of the FT stories are, I believe, provided with sources, we should simply cite the original source; if the original source didn't call the death unusual, neither should we.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:16, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
That's roughly what I mean. If we have two news sources that do call it unusual -fine. If we have FT and a news source, fine too.What matters to me is two calls on unusualness. --cyclopiaspeak! 15:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Two calls on unusualness from reliable sources, yes. Neither of those can be the Fortean Times, though. Being listed in the FT doesn't automatically disqualify something, it just doesn't matter one way or the other.—Kww(talk) 15:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
The issue with using two newspaper articles is that wire service articles are often repeated, verbatim or slightly changed, by multiple news sources. This is why I think independent assessment by a high quality academic source - either historical, medical, forensic, etc is needed to truly determine whether a death is unusual, and then we use the filter of newspapers to ensure the death is also unusual by pop-culture standards. I found a number of books entirely devoted to one death, called "The strange death of X" - but often times, the death isn't so strange, it is "strange" in the sense of mysterious, because there are doubts about what led to this person's death (e.g. was it suicide or murder) - an example is "The Strange death of Marilyn Monroe" - even though her death by overdose was not that unusual.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Two papers carrying the same wire item is still only one source.—Kww(talk) 23:23, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ The top 10 causes of death, World Health Organisation, July 2013
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