Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines

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This is the procedure for dealing with the accounts, user pages, and user rights of deceased Wikipedians as established by community consensus in this discussion.

On verification

The first step is to make absolutely sure that the user in question has indeed died. Reliable sources are key to counteracting fallacious claims. If possible, multiple attestation is desirable, as hoaxes have appeared even on reliable print sources. If a user's death is announced on wiki by someone claiming to be a relation or a friend of the deceased, a CheckUser may be conducted to authenticate such a claim.

If the user had not publicly disclosed their real-life identity, then please use caution when linking to a source; if you are unsure of whether a link to an obituary or other such notice is appropriate, please contact the Oversight team for a second opinion.

On the user page

When it is confirmed that the user has indeed died, there are two things to be done in terms of the user page.

1. The user page should be fully protected to prevent vandals from defacing the page.
2. A hatnote in compliance with the family's wishes should be placed on the user page, explaining that the user has died. This step may be bypassed if the family does not desire a hatnote. If possible, the hatnote can also "provide simple directions to a friend/family member who wishes to access the user page" but has found it fully protected, by giving them access to administrator help.

A standardized and secular template, {{Deceased Wikipedian}}, is available to be placed on the user talk pages of deceased Wikipedians. Its placement is at editors' discretion, and should be considered on a case by case basis.

On the talk page

Adding the {{Nobots}} and [[Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery]] template will prevent unsightly template messages from being delivered by bots, e.g. Signpost issues or deletion notices.

Consider archiving any unseemly disputes, warnings, or deletion notices. {{Deceased Wikipedian}} may be placed at the top of talk pages, and at the end of long talk pages. This includes Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery.

Editors who choose to do so may leave tasteful condolence notices on talk pages, by editing in the usual manner.

Please do not add discussion notifications, such as automated WP:XFD notifications generated by Twinkle, to the talk page.

On the account

As a symbolic gesture of respect, accounts of deceased Wikipedians should not be blocked unless they have been compromised. However, to prevent severe harm to the encyclopedia if such a situation should happen, any advanced user rights of deceased Wikipedians should be removed immediately. User rights to be removed primarily include template editor, edit filter manager and helper, administrator, bureaucrat, interface administrator, checkuser, and oversight, as these rights have the most potential to disrupt the project. As rights of checkuser, oversight and bureaucrat cannot be removed locally, a request to remove those should be posted on m:Steward requests/Permissions#Removal of access. For rights that may be removed locally (such as administrator), requests should be first made to relevant local language functionaries. When such rights are removed, a note should be made on the user page or talk page about the rights the user held in their editing tenure.

While local blocks are almost never done, stewards will usually globally lock the account of a deceased user to prevent impersonation and for security upon confirmation of death.

On WP:RIP and memorial pages

By default, constructively contributing Wikipedians should be honored with a listing at WP:RIP. Criteria for placement on the Deceased Wikipedians page has not been discussed, although by common sense listed users should have been active enough to be considered part of the community.

If the colleagues of an editor feel moved to do so, they may create a memorial page to honor the deceased, as long as the family has not objected and the user did not object to it prior to their death. Entries to the memorial page should be as tasteful as possible; edits that fail to be tasteful will be removed. Memorial pages are not mandatory; they are created by the community, for the community, rather than as a requirement.

Also

Delete the user's subscription to automated newsletters such as The Signpost, WikiProject updates, etc.

Remove the user from any user rights categories. Add |nocat=yes to templates such as {{Administrator topicon}} which automatically place users in a given category.

Please notify contributors to The Signpost by posting a comment in the Newsroom talk page or the Signpost's suggestion page. Optionally, you may include suggested content for an obituary to be published in The Signpost.

Check to see if the user was active on other Wikipedias, or sister projects, and leave notes on their 'village pumps' or equivalent, if so.

If the user was notable, check to see if there was an article, Wikidata item or Wikimedia Commons category about them, and update as required.