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Discussions on the Wikifauna talk page have identified potential criteria for a Wikifauna talk page being allowed:
provide some educational and reflective merit closely related to Wikipedia's goals.
be helpful or useful in building the encyclopedia.
be a sincere and genuine effort to improve the encyclopedia.
express an attitude designed to encourage a cooperative spirit among editors.
As the Wikijackal article points out, Wikipedia's credibility has been damaged in the past due to reporting the deaths of celebrities who didn't actuallly die. [1][2][3][4] These embarrassments have likely happened because there were editors who heard or thought they heard rumors of a celebrity dying, and were in such a rush to be the first person to post that the celebrity had died, they didn't stop, take a breath, and check to confirm that the source reporting the death was reliable and/or actually reporting the death, and maybe confirm it by finding another completely independent source that confirmed the death. Using a Wikifauna essay to put a name to this kind of editing raises awareness of this problem, and encourages people to reflect on whether it is the best thing for the encyclopedia for them to rush to be the first to report a death. It reinforces Wikipedia policy, regarding editor responsibility for taking the time to find reliable sources,that Wikipedia is not a newspaper as well as that there are no deadlines on Wikipedia. That covers "reflective merit", as well as being "helpful and useful in building the encyclopedia," and being a "sincere and genuine effort to improve the encyclopedia" by making it less prone to a certain kind of embarrassing error on biographies of living persons. The playful, humorous tone of the Wikijackal article is intended to bring this issue up in a gentle way, to poke a little friendly fun at people who too hastily update deaths so they might be more open to reflecting on this behavior than they would be if cautioned in a more serious manner. Mmyers1976 (talk) 20:54, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
