Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Spanish flu cases

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 in a deletion review

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List of Spanish flu cases

List of Spanish flu cases (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This article is a mess. It simultaneously is unjustifiably large and ludicrously small. The present list of deaths includes many people for whom we have no evidence they actually belong. The list itself is way under sourced. Assertions about death should be directly sourced here. Some of them are sourced on the individual bio pages, some are baldly asserted there, and a few I have removed were not even asserted at all on the respective bio pages. On the other hand the list of survivors is ludicrously short. If this disease infected 27% of the living people of the time, the list of those affected should be much, much longer. Why is it not? Probably because getting influenza, even when it is a very bad strain is not actually defining to those who survive. On the other hand estimates of the number who died from Spanish influenza range from 17 million to 100 million. The sourcing on individual causes of death is not there, and with lots of people who are borderline notable, like one time players in the 1904 olympics and one game cricket players, the study of primary sources to determine death and publication of that in secondary sources is not happening. Even if we limited this to death, it is not clear that even at the time it was always known if Spanish influenza was causing deaths. So I do not think we have any justification for creating this list, we do not have good enough sourcing to do so, and it is not defining enough to justify. John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• ’’’delete’’’. For the same reasons as my list of coronavirus 2p19/20 article delete vote. Utterly stupid article. Roxy, the PROD. . wooF 13:17, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 13:20, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Meh I just move large blocks of people with disease X from main articles to subarticles. People love writing these people with disease X articles. We maybe need guidelines around them more than just deleting one of thousands of these. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep It's too large.... It's too small... Nom makes no sense and as no valid reason has been presented for deletion (or at least not one that makes sense) it must be kept. That's not even counting the
  WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS in the nom - I fail to see what the 1904 Olympics or cricket players have anything to do with this. Smartyllama (talk) 14:42, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Johnpacklambert's comments about it being both "unjustifiably large and ludicrously small" make perfect sense to me. It is 'too large' because it contains individuals that shouldn't be on it, and it is 'too small' because it stands no chance whatsoever of ever including all those who should be on it, if 'death by Spanish influenza' (or just catching it) is a valid reason in the first place to compile a list of 'notables' from among the 25% of the world population that caught it, and the 17 to 100 million who died of it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:02, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment To add to what Johnpacklambert says above, as I noted elsewhere [1] one of my concerns regarding this list is that it includes individuals as Spanish flu fatalities where the relevant Wikipedia biography merely had a (sourced or unsourced) statement that they died 'during' the epidemic (see e.g. Rose Cleveland). No doubt some died as a result of it, but it is pure WP:OR to assume so. And there is currently no realistic mechanism to prevent this sort of WP:OR once again rendering the list entirely useless as a source of useful information, even if it is cleaned up now. Bad data (or data which cannot be relied on not to be bad) is often worse than no data at all. While this list obviously doesn't have the WP:BLP concerns that some other 'disease' lists do, it still concerns me that it has been presented in this manner. In my opinion nothing less than a complete and careful review of all existing entries, a strict requirement for proper direct sourcing, and some means to ensure that new entries to the list are properly monitored would rectify the situation. And even if the list consists only of individuals that can be reliably sourced, it is going to be of little merit, given the almost random way that individuals arrive on it. Even ignoring the clearly-inconsistent way that Wikipedia 'notability' is applied the list can only ever contain 'notable' individuals for whom a biography has been written (an immediate source of unintentional) bias), where a source for death by (or survival of) Spanish flu can be cited, and where someone adds the individual to the list (I am quite sure there must be biographies on Wikipedia that have properly-sourced deaths due to the epidemic in them that aren't on the list, since the person writing the biography may be entirely unaware of its existence). I am not going to !vote delete here, since my opinion on Wikipedia's attitudes toward biographical lists (and categories) is clearly at odds with the way many (most?) others think, but I would suggest that it might serve the interests of readers better if there were less proliferation of unreliable, inconsistent and often just plain wrong lists that can mislead more than they inform. And Wikipedia is supposed to be written for the benefit of the readers, rather than to occupy those who apparently seem to sometimes think that the utility of a list is determined by the number of entries on it rather than the verifiability and meaningfulness of its content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Adendum to nomination Geting influenza is not a defining moment for people in most cases. Which is why we have so few people listed on the infected list, even though it is thought that a quarter of the world population got sick. For most of the people involved this sickness was not defining to them. So this is for people who lived a list of people by something not defining to them, a list of mere trivia, which we should not have. For those who died, the fact as noted above that we have people such as Rose Cleveland who we lack a direct source saying they died from it shows that this list suffers from major verifiability issues. Basically this list often boils down to unsourced statements. This is very different than the Polio list where every entry is sourced, sometimes multiple times. I would suggest that we better source the entry of Boyd K. Packer, but the biography of him written by Lucille C. Tate (that is Boyd K. Packer: A Watchman on a Tower) discusses it, we also have this quote "As a boy of five, Boyd contracted polio. His illness was diagnosed at the time as pneumonia, and he recovered with no significantly apparent aftereffects. But the polio would come back to be a challenge later in life." from the biography of him at the webpage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that illustrates a little that it was broadly impactful, he suffered post-polio syndrome in his latter life in the 2000s from something he caught in 1929, were there people suffering residula effects of Spanish influenza in the 1990s, if not than it is clearly less life altering for those who survived than Polio. The most famous polio sufferer, Franklin D. Roosevelt may not have actually had polio, despite being so diagnosed, and that is fully discussed with sources in the article. We have nothing like that here, and I do not think the impact level of the disease involved would ever justify having that here, so we should just delete the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:05, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom; getting the flu is not a
  flu-like illness. buidhe 21:15, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep, claiming that the article is a mess is not an argument for deletion. This is a
  WP:POINTY nom due to a spillover from a failed attempt to delete List of people with coronavirus disease 2019. Abductive (reasoning) 23:31, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  That article actually was deleted (though I suspect a DRV is coming) but the closer acknowledged consensus was a list of deaths would be notable. I suggest the delete !voters, including nom, consider whether trimming this to a list of deaths is a valid

  WP:ATD. Smartyllama (talk) 12:50, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  • That ignores how many issues there are with the decisions on who to put on the death list. It also falsely assumes that individual level disease analysis was good enough in 1918-1920 to accurately say who was and was not dying of the Spanish flu. It also ignores the fact or nearly a decade of being a horribly written article. It is not splii over per se, it is a result of realizing just how bad this list is after having been pointed to it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:06, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    • Yes, 'individual level disease analysis' is a fundamental problem with such a list. Neither the media of the time nor more recent biographers may have generally been in a position to state unequivocally that someone died 'of' the disease. At the same time, it might have been a reasonable assumption to make about many who died at that time, of an otherwise unexplained illness. Which is why such sources tend to use phrases like "died during the pandemic". The sources didn't know for sure, and the better ones made their lack of knowledge evident. Lesser sources may have been more inclined to make assumptions based on probabilities. Even where sources exist, their reliability as a source for what they are asserting has to be sufficiently open to doubt to make this a list of people reported to have been victims of the pandemic. And being reported may be down to the source in question being more willing to make assumptions than a more careful source might. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 22:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 22:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Such a list will be either massively incomplete or else unmanageably large and impossible to adequately verify (or as nom suggests, both at the same time). Agricolae (talk) 22:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but name change to notable deaths.... keep per
  WP:NLIST After 100 years we likely have a complete list. Lightburst (talk) 02:04, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Both, in a sense - This will honestly depend on who closes the AfD and may or may not lead to other needed reviews. "Spanish flu cases" is part of the
  WP:BLP? Should this list, in-part or as a whole, be kept and listed for a merger to the "Spanish flu" article? I believe that this is all of the questions that really need answering. --Super Goku V (talk) 10:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Keep (Personally) - I think a few thing do need more work, but I have been able to restore 10 listings with sources and added sources for 5 others before all of John Pack Lambert's edits occurred. Personally, I do not believe it is an inappropriate list, but rather, it was lower in quality than almost all of the other lists. It does need more work, but I believe that the concerns of the nominator that the article was "It simultaneously is unjustifiably large and ludicrously small." have been somewhat fixed, especially with the almost doubling of sources and the current lack of listings without verifiable sources. --Super Goku V (talk) 10:41, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - There are no BLP concerns here, nor is this a list of ephemeral minor cases. A sourced list related to an extremely important event in medical history. This is fairly obviously all of the sudden being dragged here in the aftermath of the rather dubiously closed rather dubious list of coronavirus cases ended in Delete at AfD. Do not disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. Carrite (talk) 14:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That the Spanish flu is medically notable is beyond doubt, but to me 'list of people famous for other reasons who happened to contract (or die of) flu during the Spanish flu pandemic' does not inherit this medical notability. Agricolae (talk) 23:43, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete – This nomination isn't
  WP:CCPOL trifecta. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Comment Well I have trimmed it down to only those sourced from here, since Wikipedia is not a reliable source. That gives us 18 deaths and 23 sickened. I am not sure even all of those are sourced to what would count as a reliable source. I would think if we want this list to have any meaning we should include for those who survived a summary of how it impacted them, all with adequate sourcing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:51, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The page is certainly not a high quality article. That being said, it serves a purpose and I don't find an alternative for it elsewhere. The author initiated a project to organize the information of notable Spanish flu victims and survivors. A perfect place for this project is a public information sharing platform such as Wikipedia. The hope is that other authors will continue growing the list and eliminate entries that are incorrect or are not supported by evidence. Instead of deleting it, I recommend improving it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KdawsonWiki (talk • contribs) 20:09, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The list passes
  Wikipedia is not censored. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:41, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

The cited policy deals with offensive content, not poor-quality content. Agricolae (talk) 21:56, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The nay-sayers seem animated by such considerations, per the assertion above that such lists "should all be deleted as morally repugnant". Andrew🐉(talk) 23:59, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we should stick to what animates us, rather than speculating about what animates others. For example, I am animated by wanting to get rid of ill-conceived pages that are little better than a cross-categorization and that could just as easily, and more soundly, be handled by a Category. Agricolae (talk) 01:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• For Agricolae, there's
  WP:NOTDUPE, which make it very clear that categories are not superior to lists and that we don't delete one to favour the other. Andrew🐉(talk) 00:41, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Keep Showing how many notable people died or were otherwise affected by this is quite encyclopedic. Obviously only those with their own Wikipedia articles are listed, its like that with all such lists. There are references to verify the information. Dream Focus 04:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: I don't see that the list falls under
  WP:NOT; it's not indiscriminate; there are no BLP issues. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:53, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep: largely per k.e.coffman and Andrew Davidson.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 10:52, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep When Presidents and other top executives get a disease, it is taken in a symbolic way relating to the nation. Many people use it as a proxy to talk about feelings that are more personal. For example, when Eisenhower had a heart attack, that helped spur the low-fat movement. His case was symbolically used as a stand-in for people whose relatives or friends had similar conditions. When Lincoln was murdered, his funeral (including the processional train across multiple states) was also a proxy funeral, for many whose loved ones had recently died by violence. An article like this helps illuminate this and more importantly, gives clues to students in need of report and paper ideas. For example, they might look at one of the cases in here and find historical local paper accounts of it to see how their community reacted to it.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 22:31, 25 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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 a deletion review

). No further edits should be made to this page.