Category talk:Possibly living people

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This category was nominated for deletion, renaming, or merging with another category on 2006 June 1. The result of the discussion was keep.

This category was nominated for deletion, renaming, or merging with another category on 2006 June 1. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

This category was nominated for deletion, renaming, or merging with another category on 2006 December 14. The result of the discussion was speedy keep (withdrawn by nominator).

Contents 1 Split? 2 Removal 2.1 Stupid abuse of the category 2.2 Questionable use of the category 3 Missing? 4 Schrödinger's cat 5 So many of the articles in the possibly living people category are stubs, and/or unreferenced 6 To be perfectly clear... 7 Could be worthwhile

[edit] Split?

We ought to split this into two categories : one for people who are actually still missing (whether presumed dead or not), and the other for people who we merely don't have the information on - but could find out with further research. The two Nazis currently in the category fall into the latter - the others are all actual people where the historical record hasn't yet got a year of death. Morwen - Talk 22:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Update: This lack of clarity no longer exists; Category:Living people is for people definitely known to be alive; Category:Dead people's subcategories (by year, Category:Year of death missing, Category:Year of death unknown) are for those known to be deceased; Category:Possibly living people is for people for whom we have no death date and who may still be living; Category:Disappeared people is a subset of the former, for missing persons who may still be living. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, i think Category:Possibly living people, Category:Disappeared people, and Category:Year of death missing cover that, though with a lot of overlap. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!)} 16:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Update: No more overlap; see each category for their clarified criteria; they are all mutually exclusive now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

But year of death missing is for dead people who we don't know the year of death for, and disappered people includes historical disappeared people who we can be pretty certain have died. (e.g the Princes in the Tower). Morwen - Talk 16:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Update: Category:Disappeared people (and Category:Possibly living people for that matter) no longer include people we can be certain are dead; see Category:Living people for the criteria. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal

How do we take someone off the list that we know is still alive? NMTPhysics 19:44, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Go to the bottom of that person's Wikipedia article, and replace the Possibly living people category from the bottom of the page with the Living people category. Which person is it?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 23:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Likewise, if the person is now known to be dead, change category to "YYYY deaths" (where YYYY is the year), "Date of death missing" (if it is and can probably be found) or "Date of death unknown" (if it is lost forever). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

At what point do we assume someone to have died of old age? --BDD 18:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been using about 105 years old. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!)} 22:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. --BDD 21:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

See Category:Living people; the standard appears to be "born after 1885", though that date may increment each year (I would hope it does). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If strictly adhered to, the (admittedly arbitrary) conditions of Category:Births of the last 123 years and Category:Deaths of the last 123 years, based on the 122-year-164-day lifespan of Jeanne Calment, would dictate that 1885 should enter the date count in mid-June 2007 (starting from January 1, 1885 and taking into consideration leap years). For the small number of individual biographical articles affected, there would would be no point in micromanaging this matter by taking note of specific birthdays—only the year is noted. The elucidation of introductory text to this Category and Category:Living people would be updated annually in mid-June, with 1886 becoming the succeeding year in June 2008. For the handful of individuals from that period with missing years of birth, death or both, common sense is the best guide. Those with missing years of birth should have the earliest year of activity extrapolated. In counting backward 122-123 years, extreme care in ascertaining who is still possibly among the living is no longer a priority. The individuals involved are almost invariably of low notability (minor 19th century sportspeople, etc.) or once-somewhat-notables (e.g., Hugh Cecil (born 1889)) whom most editors already place into Category:Year of death missing or (prematurely and, almost always, incorrectly) into Category:Year of death unknown. Romanspinner (talk) 06:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

To suggest that anyone born over 110 years ago who isn't known to be living and therefore already in the Category:Living people should be added to it, or to Category:Possibly living people for that matter, is ludicrous. There's about a snowball's chance in hell that we have unidentified supercentenarians lurking about in Wikipedia articles. Gene Nygaard (talk) 05:08, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stupid abuse of the category

I think it might be sensible to remove Judas Iscariot from the list of possibly living people...

[edit] Questionable use of the category

What about Amelia Earheart? Cao Wei 07:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, she would be 109 years old. --Charlene 19:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Amelia is in Category:Disappeared people. It makes no judgement as to whether the person is alive, dead, or whatever.--T. Anthony 03:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

When they're something like 130 years old they get moved to Category:Year of death missing (if date can plausibly be found) or Category:Year of death unknown (if date lost to history); see Category:Living people for the criteria. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought Osama Bin Laden was strongly believed to be alive. Damian Corrigan 18:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

No proof yet. If there is proof, just change the category. If there is doubt, he stays in here. Simple. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

How about Elvis? I strongly believe that he should be included. If only the stupid people from Pluto hadn't kidnapped him....

Jim Morrison? Possibly. Tupac Shakur? Probably not.

2pac's not dead, but alot of people think he is, he should be here

According to multiple reliable sources, he's been confirmed dead, or at least I'd imagine that to be the case (haven't checked the Tupac article).--HisSpaceResearch 06:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to familiarise myself with The 7 Day Theory, actually.--HisSpaceResearch 06:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

What about Jesus?

In answer to all of the above, Wikipedia is not for crackpotism or wishful fanwanking about pop culture stars, nor for pushing religious beliefs (besides which, Christians do not posit that Jesus is alive, but rather that he died, came back to life for a bit and then ascended into heaven to watch over them as a deity). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing?

[No actual question was posed.]

Assuming someone meant to ask a question here, the answer is that Category:Disappeared people exists for such cases (after enough time has elapsed that they could not possibly be alive, they go in Category:Year of death unknown (because it will probably never be known), as opposed to memebers of Category:Possibly living people, who at that point go into Category:Year of death missing since their date can probably be found. See Category:Living people for the cut-off dates. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schrödinger's cat

<humor>If Schrödinger's cat was human, would it be in this category?</humor> --Kevinkor2 08:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] So many of the articles in the possibly living people category are stubs, and/or unreferenced

I've noticed... perhaps a fair share of them wouldn't pass WP:N. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HisSpaceResearch (talk • contribs) 23:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

I don't see that this raises any point related to this category. That stubs are categorized and someone might disagree with one such categorization is matter for that stub's talk page. Whether something might not survive WP:AFD on notability grounds does not mean it should not be properly categorized until such time that it is AfD'd. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

But if there's not sufficient information to determine whether a person is even alive or not, then there is a good chance that there's not sufficient information for us to have an article about them at all. Many of these people are notable for one thing or one event in their lives only, failing WP:BLP1E, WP:PSEUDO and possibly WP:COATRACK, and we should also remember that Wikipedia is not a directory of people or of anything else - it is an encyclopedia.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 16:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To be perfectly clear...

People who were kidnapped, such as Jacob Wetterling, do they belong only in this category, only in Category:Disappeared people or in both? I figured I might as well ask, rather than get into a revert war. Canadian Paul 08:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't actually know. Look at other articles in the disappeared people category on people who are young enough to still possibly be alive, and see if this category is included on those articles. I recognise you from deathlist.net by the way...-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 13:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Could be worthwhile

You could use findmypast.com or ancestry.co.uk to look in the England and Wales Death Records 1984-2005 for some of these people, especially if they are from England or Wales. 79.69.81.14 (talk) 15:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)