Talk:Mount Sinai Beth Israel

Should hospital articles include lists of notable people who have died there? BMK (talk) 05:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - This question has come up before, in an RfC begun by the editor User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (RAN), and the consensus in that discussion was that they should not. Unfortunately, RAN did not accept that consensus and created a fork of the article in question in order to put a death list in it. He had already created death lists in other articles, such as this one, and now he is disputing the consensus of his own RfC by edit warring to restore the death lists back into the articles. So it would be nice to decide, once and for all, if lists of notable deaths should be included in hospital articles. BMK (talk) 05:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep! - It meets every criteria for notable information. I agree it does not belong in Ottendorfer Public Library and Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital because it is an article about the building, not the medical institution. It is no different than listing the people that are born or died in a city. Every city article lists them. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have posted a neutral pointer on the talk page of WikiProject Hospitals, and have listed this RfC on Centralized discussion. BMK (talk) 05:40, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have notified all participants of the previous RfC, regardless of their opinion at that time, of the existence of this new RfC, with the exception of RAN, who has already commented here. BMK (talk) 05:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I don't see how this is relevant information. Also, why not list all the people who were born there or had major operations there? You have to draw the line somewhere, and it's arbitrary to list just one trivial connection, such as death. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 07:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose on moral, notability, relevance and grounds of good taste. --
  talk) 08:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply
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• Oppose - lists of associated people can have a role in some types of articles- in university articles on there are often lists of notable students/alumni and staff; with those lists there is a tangible connection, usually in terms of academic work carried out over a period of years. When people die, a location is often known and is a detail commonly published as part of an obituary. A hospital might be named as the place of death of a person, but that information on its own doesn't offer a reliable insight in to the person's connection with the hospital. It there is an interesting story behind a notable person dying in a hospital then it may be something to include in the article, but I don't see that lists of notable people will be a useful feature. Drchriswilliams (talk) 08:21, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as quite honestly it's in rather bad taste!, and as noted above Alumni have connections with their school/uni whereas with the hospital .... well you either get something fixed or you die..... Cited or not I don't believe we should have this info I really don't. –Davey2010^Talk 13:31, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose with one proviso; if the death itself is notable, as is the treatment - say, something like JFK's assassination - then including it is not problematic. Including lists of people who die in the hospital is otherwise of no value. Scr★pIron^IV 15:46, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: the hospital location of a death belongs in the biographical article about that person, with a wikilink to the article about the hospital, if one exists. Anything further is indeed a list of trivia and is not notable information for the hospital. I agree as well that it is in extremely bad taste and I cannot imagine any hospital to wish such lists to be included in their articles, even with multiple sources. Where someone dies is an accident of circumstances and does not add an ounce of notablility to that hospital. Fylbecatulous talk 15:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - In the hospital's article a person should only be named if they play a significant role in the hospital that the article is supposed to focus on. If they cause closure or add a wing, it's OK to name them as part of naming others in the hospital history. Limiting it to death bequests or just patients who happened to die there is wrong. Markbassett (talk) 15:56, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• No, except in the rare case that the person's death is particularly significant to the hospital. Otherwise, it's just indiscriminate information; people die a lot in hospitals.  Sandstein  19:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a random list of facts. RAN should be adding this information to Wikidata, not Wikipedia. Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• It's OK with me. Mentioning some notable people who have been treated there (some of whom may have died) seems more what you'd want, though, I guess. As to "bad taste", heh... this is the Wikipedia, it's a nexus of bad taste per
  WP:NOTCENSORED so spare me the sudden pearl-clutching. The Wikipedia is not paper so if an editor wants to do the work of compiling and properly referencing such a list, I'm not inclined to tell him not to. Or make the call that no reader would find this useful. The fact that rhe person who wants to do this is an editor who is unpopular and, apparently, deservedly so, might make a difference in some cases, but not in this one I guess. Herostratus (talk) 02:24, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply
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The standard isn't whether we conceive of some hypothetical reader being interested in this content. It's whether the content constitutes information consistent with an encyclopedic summary of the subject. Further, the relative "popularity" of involved editors is never a relevant argument to deciding content issues on this project. We make these determinations on the basis of consistency with sources, the policy arguments forwarded, community consensus and a smidgin of editorial discretion. I doubt the other editors responding here voted uniformly to oppose because they believed Richard Arthur Norton to be some kind of pariah. I know I certainly have no idea what this unpopularity you speak of pertains to. Snow ^{let's rap} 09:43, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose not encyclopedic, IMO.--
  WP:WAWARD) 02:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply
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• Oppose - Including the death of notable people would read like trivia. The only time it should be included is if the death was significant and widely covered as ScrapIronIV stated. Meatsgains (talk) 03:29, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose – That sounds like pure trivia. As ScrapIronIV suggested, such information should only be included in the most exceptional cases (e.g, death of JFK). Graham (talk) 03:56, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose for most of the reasons above and there should not be a list of all the notable living treated at a hospital either. --I am One of Many (talk) 04:07, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - I could see talking about people who died there in certain cases where a hospital is well known for a particular treatment, the hospital played a prominent role in the life of a prominent person (e.g. spending some months or years there), and other such unusual circumstances, but in general, as well those above have argued, this is trivia[l], and even in exceptional cases it would probably be better to work it into the prose rather than create a list. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:01, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - A textbook case of
  WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Rhododendrites has hit the nail on the head; particularly notable deaths (that is, in which the death or the treatments itself was the focus of coverage, not incidental to discussion of the individual or the hospital) could in rare instances be worth noting in the prose, but the list being proposed is very clearly unencyclopedic and in conflict with policy here. Meaning no offense to Richard, but given community consensus on these matters, I think he could have seen which way the wind was going to blow in this one, if he'd wanted to, and saved the effort. On Wikipedia we are interested in a substantive encyclopedic summary of the general and pertinent information that is essential to an understanding of a topic, not every little cross-detail that can be crammed in. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:55, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply
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• Oppose: No sources save for tabloids and morbid blogs cover "notable deaths in hospitals", so we should not cover them. Esquivalience ^t 21:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't see the point of including only deaths, but I can see the point of including particularly famous patients (whether they lived or died). For example, it's a little weird that
  New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. St Mary's Hospital, London isn't a great article, but it would be incomplete if it didn't mention some of its royal patients. Basically, you should follow the sources. If the sources about the hospital mention famous patients as a reference point ("St Mary's Hospital, London, where the royal babies were born"), then the article about the hospital should mention them, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:29, 27 November 2015 (UTC)[reply
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