Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of famous hypochondriacs

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was DELETE. Well, the numbers are towards three-quarters at 11d-5k. This is the kind of debate that could be swayed by work during, though. That does not appear to have happened as the deleters continued to stack up throughout. Also, Piecraft's comment though numerically I put it as a keep, sounds more like a categorify, without any particular desire to retain the article. -Splash^talk 21:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of famous hypochondriacs

Unsourced, useless, possibly libelous. Delete. Neutrality^talk 01:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete - unless rewritten with sources and facts, the 2 ingredients of wikipedia. - Hahnchen 01:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, and add sources. Owen× ☎ 02:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, this information should go into the articles on the people listed, if it can be verified. -- Kjkolb 02:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, but add sources and some introductory information. Unsourced != deletable, because then we could delete all stubs and would have to really raise the requirement for a newly-created article. --Idont Havaname 02:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • How long can an article remain in an unverified state, once serious questions are raised? I've rather assumed that once seriously challenged, any item of information is deletable if not sourced fairly promptly. Surely verifiability does not mean that any assertion can remain in Wikipedia indefinitely until it is proved false. In fact that page, which is official policy, says in so many words: "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit." Dpbsmith (talk) 03:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Comment I've moved the unsourced entries—that is to say, all of them—to the article's Talk page and replaced the opening sentence to one similar to the opening of List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder, namely "This is a list of people accompanied by verifiable source citations associating them with hypochondria." This means the number of valid items presently on the list is zero. I've also added Oscar Levant to the list on the talk page, as I'm about 99% certain he has discussed this in his own autobiographies, and our article on him asserts that he was a "notorious hypochondriac." I sort of think sources can be found for Samuel Johnson and Hans Christian Andersen. I think it is sloppy and irresponsible to put up an unsourced list like this and expect others to do the work of digging for verification. Find sources first, add names after sources have been found. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I've started adding sources to some of the more well-known cases. Any help would be appreciated. Owen× ☎ 03:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as completely idiosyncratic non-topic. Much better done by putting the information in the bios of the individuals involved and creating a category for hypochondrics. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. A subjective term anachronistically applied to people from an era with a complete different understanding of disease, before germ theory. . . impossible to write verifiably. Chick Bowen 03:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Exactly, Chick. Diagnosing historical figures and/or people who have never been diagnosed by a doctor (not a historian, fan or gossip columnist) is sketchy at best. -- Kjkolb 04:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete possibly create a category. Dlyons493 03:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete and make a category if this list can be verified. 23skidoo 05:14, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete I have an extreme dislike for these types of lists... for one thing, "famous" is POV. Another is the self-diagnosis thing which is both annoying and libellus. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 17:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Better as a category, if at all. Superm401 | Talk 21:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as a category, useful and informative list for future reference. Piecraft 15:05, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• weak keep. If able to be verified. Roodog2k (talk) 17:07, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• keep this if they can be verified it should not be erased Yuckfoo 21:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete could only ever be a category at best. Cursive 02:48, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• This information belongs in one of only two places on Wikipedia: in the article Hypochondria or nowhere at all. Since there doesn't seem to be any interest in merging it (or else somebody'd have suggested that already), I call for it to be Deleted. The Literate Engineer 04:51, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.