Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Longevity/Archive 2

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

BIO1E

I have removed[1] from the Biographies section of this project's notability guidelines the sentence "These articles are subject to Wikipedia policy guidance on one-event biographies." (i.e. WP:BLP1E)

Longevity is an attribute or characteristic of a person, not an event. An event is "a thing that happens or takes place" (OED) or an "occurrence" (Merriam Webster).

Reaching a great age is not an "event", because it fits neither of those definitions. Longevity is the outcome of a process stretched out over many years. Nobody suddenly becomes very very old one morning; it is a process which happens over decades, and arguably over a whole lifetime.

This can be illustrated by testing these dictionary definitions in sample sentences. For example, it would be absurd to say any of the following:

  1. Seamus's longevity occurred in August 1995
  2. Roisins's advanced age took place in 2003
  3. Deirde's extreme old age took place in 1943
  4. Aidan's old age happened on 21 February 1967

However, it would make perfect sense to rework those sentences to describe longevity as a process, or as a characteristic of a phase of someone's life, by tying it to era rather than to a point in time:

  1. In the 1990s, Seamus's longevity was widely noted/ignored/whatever
  2. By the 2000s, Roisin had reached an advanced age but she continued to do whatever
  3. By the Deirde's extreme old age took place in 1943
  4. By the late 1960s, Aidan's old age was widely noted

We could also tie the characteristic of longevity to an event, e.g.

  1. Seamus's longevity allowed him to witness the birth of his great-great-granddaughter on 21 February 1967
  2. When the bridge was finally opened in 2003, Roisins's advanced age prevented her from attending
  3. Despite Deirde's extreme old age, she conducted her great-grandson's baptism in 1943
  4. At the company's 50th anniversary in August 1995, Aidan's old age was commemorated by whatever

But it simply doesn't make sense to claim that longevity/old age is an "event".

WikiProject guidelines should not try to override broader community guidelines. In this case a project guideline was trying extend the guideline BIO1E by using a definition of "event" unsupported by common usage or by dictionary. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:43, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl I disagree. WP:BIO1E has been correctly used by this project. The overwhelming number of reliable sources for supercentenarians revolve around specific occurrences: Birthdays, being named the "oldest x", and death reports/obituaries. What this project has done is consider examples like a 110th birthday news feature, 112th birthday news feature, and an obituary report as a typical singular tightly related event of a persons supercentenarian-hood, if you will, and so fall under WP:BIO1E. This event may last a few years, but just as the Korean War was one event despite taking place over a period of years (and technically decades), this is still just one long event.
The trouble arises when editors disagree whether 110th and 112th birthday news features, and an obituary constitute one event or not, since technically they happen at different times, but that is just an opinion that can go either way depending on consensus in particular discussions. To use a real world example of this in action, typically people call the Battle of the Somme a single battle, even though it in fact was more aptly called an offensive since it was a series of closely connected battles over a period of months. Our use of WP:BIO1E is not wrong, it's just a matter of perspective a number of editors here agree one way on. Newshunter12 (talk) 10:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
@Newshunter12: thanks for the reply, but most of that is either a v big stretch, or easily falsifiable.
  1. Tightly-related events are not neccessarily the same event. For example the death or resignation of a head of state and the installation of her successor are as tightly-related as tightly-related gets, but they are not the same event.
  2. it is true that in some cases, news coverage is clustered around birthdays. However, that does not apply to all such biogs. The project has made no effort to distinguish between those biogs where the coverage is all birthday-centric and those where it isn't. Instead, it has repeatedly treated all coverage of a person's longevity as being birthday coverage.
  3. The fact that a article is published on the occasion of a birthday does not means that it is solely about the birthday. Many such articles use the birthday as a hook to tell a longer story of the persons's life. (I imagine the newsroom dialogue as something like ... Hack: "Hey editor, I found this amazing old woman who will be 112 month after next. She did x, y and z and still tells a great story". Editor: "Good work, hack. Do the interview this week, and bring the photographer to her birthday party to file the story that day. I want life history and pictures of party hats, cakes with candles etc")
  4. The commentary on sources by WP:LONGEVITY editors repeatedly shows little signs of having actually read the sources. Coverage by national broadsheets usually has greater depth and breadth than the more tabloid local papers, but WP:LONGEVITY editors repeatedly conflate the two even when the article under discussion clearly has sources which say much more about the life.
  5. The analogy with the Battle of the Somme is a false one. Like many other events (1992 Olympic Games, 2004 Republican Party Convention, 1814—1845 Congress of Vienna) that battle did not take place on a single day, but it has a clear start and end, in this case defined days: 1 July 1916 and 18 November 1916. Longevity clearly ends at death, but it has no defined beginning.
  6. Are you seriously trying to say that an article on a birthday and a obituary after a death on a random day a few years later are covering a single event? Seriously?
  7. If this is as you say just an opinion that can go either way depending on consensus in particular discussions, then it should be mentioned in guidelines only as something where editors disagree.
  8. Same with your statement that Our use of WP:BIO1E is not wrong, it's just a matter of perspective a number of editors here agree one way on. Even if it is as loose a guideline as you claim (and as above, I strongly disagree), the fact that some of the editors in one project regard it as open to interpretation does not entitle them to claim their choice of interpretation as policy.
So I'm sorry, but this project's use of BIO1E is at best a big stretch, and at worst plain wrong. This is part of a wider pattern which I have spotted over the last few days, in which WP:LONGEVITY participants have repeatedly stretched and/or flouted or misrepresented policies in pursuit of their clearly expressed POV-pushing agenda that coverage of longevity is clearly "cruft".
I want to remind editors that discretionary sanctions apply to this topic area, so all editors should be on their very best behaviour, as set out at WP:ACDS#Guidance_for_editors. Sadly, a lot of the conduct I have seen in the 2 or 3 days since I bumped into this topic again after an absence of about ten years has fallen well short of those standards, and has far too many signs of being a partisan crusade for deletion rather than an effort to improve coverage. Just look at how nearly all the discussion on this age is about deleting or merging pages, how the slew of AFDs are devoid of very basic requirements like WP:BEFORE, and how much of WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 7 is a riot of WP:LONGEVITY editors repeatedly expressing open contempt for the accurate categorisation of topics in valid categories.
There is more than enough in all this to make a very good case for discretionary sanctions now. I really don't like going down that road, because it sours relationships and sours the whole experience of editing, which should be rewarding. But if we're going to avoid that, then this project needs to stop acting like a tag team, and take a much less partisan view of the topic, and a much less partisan approach to policies and guidelines. It needs to start looking for sources rather than simply dismissing those already cited, and it needs to assess those source honestly and dispassionately rather than trying to tar to tar them all with the same brush to drive a pre-determined outcome. The lack of any change of heart even when presented with a slew of new reliable sources is to me a very clear indication that I am witnessing zealous deletionism rather than a good faith attempt to weigh a topic against guidelines.
That's why I took the time to post at length in some recent AFDs, and then to review this project's guidance and to post here about it. So far, the civil responses such as @Newshunter12's response here have far outweighed the personal attacks from one editor, but the delete-everything-without-distinction approach seems very entrenched. I hope that will change, or some day someone will press the DS button. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


Collapsing, imperfectly, at the point where things really start going downhill. We have an opportunity for a fresh start in this topic area after more than a decade of one of the very worst sinkholes of time and energy the English Wikipedia has ever seen. Please let's keep it cool.
Newshunter, it's not OK to say stuff like "Please think very carefully about your continued presence editing in this topic"; BHG, take a little more time to get the feel of all that's going on in this "reboot" (I hate that word), and remember that there's at least one other experienced admin already involved here. EEng 05:54, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl I understand you feel strongly about this, but your lengthy wall of text attempting to drown out the sound rebuttal to your accusations doesn't change anything. The Longevity Project's above use of WP:BIO1E is a now well established practice and numerous administrators have found it a sound argument for deletion or redirection for many months now. It's not our fault well over 10 years of cruft buildup is being purged in a relatively short time and that past lax standards lulled good-faith editors such as yourself into a false sense of security about what warrants a stand-alone article.
Being new here, you didn't see the additions we made like here and here or how in October I found new sources to replace outdated ones to bring entries into compliance and added new entries onto the living British list so that every entry was added or updated by me. We are not here to destroy anything and threatening a legal anvil will be dropped on our heads or rooting we get arbcomed and sanctioned away is not helpful.
You were heavily involved in this project about 10 years ago and I'm not trying to chase you away, but sometimes a good persons time being involved in something comes and passes, and their continued presence is not helpful in new eras. You showed up, didn't understand what was going on and thought there was a fire, and yanked the sprinkler system on, drenching a perfectly good office. Please think very carefully about your continued presence editing in this topic and is it really helpful to the community as a whole. Newshunter12 (talk) 22:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Oh dear. An ad hominem, rather than a substantive reply. And yes, my reply was long, but not a wall of text. My critique of your response is in 8 numbered points, to facilitate further discussion.
As to your assertion that we are not here to destroy anything, I could produce several dozen diffs from the last few days in support of my observation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:29, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
You don't seem to like facts or consensus you are not in control of. I must say your repeated threats, walls of text, conspiracy theories, nagging (over 30 pings in the last four days - more then from all other editors combined by a lot over three years of editing), attempt to control a project you aren't even interested in, and demand that I change my CfD votes to essentially prove I'm not part of some bizarre anti-old people disruption scheme are all quite unpleasant. I regret stating I admire your past work because clearly I was wrong about what kind of editor you are. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Again, ad hominen in lieu of substantive response. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:21, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
And once again you don't like facts, so you just claim it's all invalid. Newshunter12 (talk) 05:31, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Oh dear. We disagree about what are the facts here, so per the core en.wp policy of WP:CONSENSUS, the next step is to discuss the matter to try to reach a consensus.
The sequence of events above is clear enough. I posted about my concerns. You replied. I responded to all your points ... and then you disengaged entirely from the substance and asserted that all your points were facts. That's not how consensus is built. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:57, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad you are aware of the DS BrownHairedGirl because you will not be surprised when they are applied to you if your piss poor attitude toward me does not improve.

"Longevity" clearly is not a lifelong event. The vast majority of people do not live an extraordinarily long time so their lives are not part of longevity. Longevity is the event of living from age X (say 110) to death. It appears to be an event based mostly dumb luck based on the numbers of super old people drink, smoke and do other unhealthy things. The other very common way to experience the event of being called really old is to to claim a false birthday. Legacypac (talk) 18:44, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Straw man, Legacypac. I vary clearly did not claim that longevity is any sort of event at all. The entire point of my post is that it is not an "event".
My attitude to you is not personal. I have I have responded your contributions to numerous XFDs, pointing out their deficiencies, which is routine practice in a consensus-forming discussion. And when I offered[2] to help you pursue you pursue your goal in a non-disruptive way, your response to my courtsey was a personal insult[3]. Yet you somehow think that places me at risk of sanctions. Wow. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:29, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
@EEng: an opportunity for a fresh start is great. I welcome that.
However, this whole topic area will continue to be a sinkhole unless editors can get away from the binary divide of longevity good/longevity bad which has predominated until now. I hoped that a discussion here on what seems to me to be misapplication of policy could be part of that process of assessing longevity in the same way as other topics are assessed.
That has not been successful, so I think an RFC on BIO1E is needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:22, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Exactly one editor is loudly disagreeing with the consensus here. And yes, DS can be applied to an Admin. I'll put you on notice right now not to even think of using your Admin discretion in this area given your involvement. Legacypac (talk) 07:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

A couple of points

  1. Birthdays and obituaries are pretty WP:ROUTINE coverage, and are quite often found in "local interest" coverage with limited circulation. And I agree with Legacypac and Newshunter12 that such reporting meets the spirit of WP:ONEEVENT even if it arguably does not meet the letter of it.
  2. What appears to be independent items of coverage very often turns out to be the same story picked up and posted almost verbatim by another publisher. It's somewhat misleading to trumpet these as numerous independent sources.
  3. Many of these "local interest" stories are very bad about even investigating the plausibility of old age claims. So much so that I'd question whether some of them shoudl be credited with a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" as the policy puts it. This isn't just a problem for the clearly dubious accounts of people reaching 120+, but also quite a few of the 110-119 claims as well.
  4. Even where skepticism of claims of extreme old age are present in the sources, this is typically omitted from the WP article. An example is the dismal Habib Miyan (allegedly 137 years old); where several of the sources in the article mentioned that he had no birth certificate, that the Guinness Book of Records could not verify his age, and that he was drawing a pension issued under a different name. Yet none of this was in the article before I repaired it. Any form of skepticism had previously been removed from the article if you look at its history, and I expect it to be quietly edited out again if I don't pay attention. Looking at some of the other articles up at AfD, some of them are a bit better but many show the same credulity and deliberate omission of sourced claims questioning their implausible old age. My view is that Wikipedia should not be promoting this woo. Better to have no article at all than a false one.

Reyk YO! 12:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Reyk: Thanks for that thoughtful reply. However, I can't agree with much of it.
  1. I don't agree that birthdays and obituaries are WP:ROUTINE coverage, except in tabloids very local papers. Quality news outlets such as the BBC, Guardian, Washington Post, The Times etc cover birthdays only v exceptionally, and publish obituaries of only a very select group of people. Yet in all the AFDs I have read over the last few days, there has been no attempt to distinguish between local and national (or international) coverage; it has all been tarred with the same brush.
    I am glad that we seem to agree that such reporting does not meet the letter of WP:ONEEVENT, even if we disagree about its interpretation. I don't hold with interpreting policy and guidelines to mean something other than what the words say. That's a recipe for madness; if you want a policy or guideline to mean something different, get consensus to make it say something different. So I think an RFC is much needed to resolve the wide gap between this project's view of BIO1E and the words on that page.
  2. Major news outlets source a proportion of their reporting through news agencies. Some of them declare that source; sadly others may not. So we cannot assume either way; we need to actually check and compare. I was sorry that in all of the ~15 AFDs I examined, there was zero attempt to analyse the sources in this way.
  3. Indeed, much local journalism is sloppy and/or uncritical; but many of the sources cited in articles currently at AFD are of a much higher quality. That is why I have repeatedly urged editors to actually examine the reports and the reputation of the sources rather than treating it all as being of the same nature. And again, none of AFDs I have seen have included any evidence of any such attempt.
  4. From what I have seen of recent articles, there does seem to some of that glossing over reliably-sourced deficiencies in claims. Not as bad as it was at the height of GRG invasion, but of course the level of gloss should be zero. And of course, that sort of issue should be noted very prominently in an article: a mention in the first sentence, and more lower down.
    However, please remember that AFD is not an article quality review; it is a decision on whether to keep the page, and even very badly-written or blatantly source-contradicting articles can and should be rewritten. Per WP:RUBBISH, bad or inaccurate writing is not a reason to delete.
From what I have seen so far, articles are being funneled into AFD at quite a high rate often (several per day), with at best a very cursory and partisan attempt to analyse them before nomination. For example, 11 articles AFDed in the period 7—10 December, which imposes a huge burden on any editors who want to evaluate them properly. I have repeatedly seen boilerplate nominations which show no sign of any of the WP:BEFORE checks: no evaluation of existing sources, no searches for more sources, and — most shockingly — none of the WP:LONGEVITY editors re-evaluating their stances when new sources are identified (see e.g. AFD:Charlotte Hughes and AFD:William Coates.
These are not the characteristics of a dispassionate attempt to evaluate articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Whole heartedly agree with User:BrownHairedGirl. We are seeing far too many AfD proposals that appear to put zero work into assessing whether the article really should be deleted or not.
Without doing WP:before and then (*very important*) showing that they have done it, the proposer throws the entire work of assessing AFD onto the other editors.
Regarding the points above about BLP1E above, this mistakes the entire purpose of that rule which is that where you have a BLP1E it is the event that is notable, not the person, and that the article should instead be about the event (I.e, the “1E”). It is NOT primarily a delete rational but instead a reason to merge/redirect, not delete as a first step.
In the case of longevity there is no specific “1E” to point to, since longevity is not an event, it’s an attribute (like being exceptionally tall/short/fat/thin). There is no “1E” to redirect to - the “event” is their lives so they are naturally the appropriate subject. If you want to use WP:1E as a delete rationale, and this is the only rationale presented, you have to say -in each and every case that you use it- why you are proposing delete rather than merge/redirect. If the reason is “no suitable redirect/merge target” then that is not a valid reason since in that event the logical conclusion is that the apparently notable subject matter is in the right place.FOARP (talk) 14:00, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
I can only state that I do, very much, put thought into them. That I haven't changed my mind isn't a sign of pure close-mindedness, it's that I, personally, haven't found the arguments persuasive; most of the arguments don't address one of my core concerns, which is that a couple short paragraph amounting to "he said he lived, he died" is nowhere near enough for an encyclopedia article. Others are of course welcome to disagree with me, that's why I've mostly chosen AfD. Pinging User:EEng if he so desires to join in, as I'm borrowing a lot of his ideas. (Finally, FOARP, while we've disagreed on the last two AfDs in the table above I'm glad you've joined in here, getting fresh voices of any kind can only help) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:11, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
I think it might be worth considering whether WP:1E is actually a good thing to cite as a grounds for direct deletion. The policy states clearly what it's supposed to be about ("When an individual is significant for his or her role in a single event, it may be unclear whether an article should be written about the individual, the event or both." - my emphasis). The policy isn't saying that 1E means no notability, the policy is telling you that where there is only 1E, the event itself may be the appropriate subject instead of the person assuming it is demonstrably notable.
Can you state why this is a relevant policy to the subject we are discussing? If an article is written about A.N. Other, who received repeated coverage in reliable sources over years because of his longevity, then what is the event? Their longevity? So you would be happy with an article titled "The longevity of A.N. Other"?
You might think the above is a reductio ad absurdum, but it is the inevitable logic of saying that longevity is a 1E issue, because 1E was never intended for the purpose that it is being used for here. FOARP (talk) 16:15, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
@The Blade of the Northern Lights I'm sorry to say that that I see little or no evidence to support your assertion that you do, very much, put thought into them (i.e. the AFDs). Having examined about a dozen of your AFDs, I see none of them which meets even the basic requirements of WP:BEFORE. The only one which comes close is the most recent (AFD:Tuti Yusupova), where you do refer to the sources but give no indication of which sources you evaluated. See my comments there about how your asseement is more declaratory than analytical.
Similarly, at AFD:Benito Martínez you complain that articles uncritically spew bullshit, but when I examined the article under discussion I found that what we actually had was a near-perfect description of an unproven claim.[4]
It's not only you doing this sort of thing. At AFD:Charlotte Hughes I unpicked an attempt to @EEng to claim that there was nothing to sat about her, when a little scrutiny showed that this was because EEng's stripped version omitted a lot of material which was relevant and some which would clearly be included if available in any biographical article. That attempt to dismiss all detail of the life and then claim there is no detail is replicated in your own nomination of [Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tuti Yusupova|AFD:Tuti Yusupova]], as I also analysed and foud to be unsupported at[5].
The consistent theme that I see in these AFD nominations (as well as in the CFDs which prompted me to ask what on earth is going n here) is a desire to eliminate articles on either claimed or verified longevity, achieved by repeated breaches of basic policies and guidelines and backed by tag-teaming from other WPLONGEVITY members who appear equally goal-oriented rather than policy-focused.
I hope you will address @FOARP's points about BIO1E. FOARP's point that longevity is not an event, it’s an attribute and their "what is the event" question are the central issues in the use of BIO1E. They deserve substantive consideration. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:48, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
I can't answer all of this at the moment, but I will say that my nomination statements for the categories versus the articles are different matters. The categories, as I explained, were just a series of misfires, and when I realized I didn't know what I was doing I walked away so as not to make things worse. My article nominations are fairly general because on other topics I've found excessively long statements lead to accusations of bludgeoning, and I'm rather given to verbosity if I'm not careful (courtesy of my ASD, if it helps explain anything), so I figured I'd keep them brief and explain in greater detail if needed (it takes only a sentence or two to roughly say "I found nothing I consider useful"). Also, to be sure, some of this reflects my frustration at the long, long, long cleanup process that has been the effort to get this topic area in some order, as I anticipated people familiar with this subject would see (and indeed, as described above my efforts here earned me a little love letter from a secret admirer, plus a more graphic one to Newshunter12). Beyond that I think there's a simple disagreement on whether coverage of age milestones is a single event and/or if they have enough material for a standalone article, and that I'll have to return to. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:43, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
I can’t speak for other Editors working on AfD, but I can say for myself that when I see a delete proposal for an article supported by references in which there is no discussion of those references, and no sign of WP:BEFORE being done, then I am strongly inclined towards keeping the article unless my WP:BEFORE shows otherwise. It doesn’t take much to show other editors that you did the work necessary to support deletion, just “the references aren’t WP:SIGCOV and my WP:BEFORE turned up nothing beyond what’s already cited”. I am particularly uninclined to delete when I see multiple delete proposals from the same nominator all with the same brief and uninformative rationale posted all in the same day, because this often turns out to be an editor (even an admin) just pressing the nuke button on someone/something they don’t like for reasons which may be unrelated to policy.
The WP:1E question was meant seriously. WP:1E is not primarily a delete rationale, it’s primarily a rationale for redirecting/merging biographical articles to event articles where the event article is the more suitable place to discuss it. Hence it makes sense to discuss the “don’t taze me bro” guy at University of Florida Taser incident rather than at an article about him, since he is only notable for one event.
For someone whose notability comes from their longevity, just what is the event supposed to be? And if you believe that you can identify a meaningful event, why aren’t you proposing a redirect/merge to it? FOARP (talk) 10:57, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
A lot of the arguments, especially for the validated supercentenarians, have been that the relevant information is already in tables; as most of these people are only notable for their age (sometimes in conjunction with a country), tables on various longevity articles express age and nationality. And for those with a little more coverage than usual, but still not enough for a full page, it's easy to put a minibio on a list; Venere Pizzinato is an older example, Sum Ying Fung is a more recent one. A lot of the validated supercentenarian nominations explicitly mention keeping information on tables and/or creating a minibio. The longevity claims people aren't as well organized, which is why I haven't argued as much for merging them, but I think it'd be eminently possible to neaten that page up and give ourselves some space to merge some of these into minibios.
As for 1E, like I said most of these people are only known for their ages. I suppose WP:ONEATTRIBUTE would be a better way to express it. They're known for something about them (lifespan), which has a progression so may be noted more than once but is still only one thing. But for so many of them, besides noting their ages what the sources actually say about them is painfully mundane and unencyclopedic (from looking through these pages I've learned a lot of things about peoples' eating habits, almost none of which is at all significant), thus not really leaving us with much, if any, material to write about. Then we're left with a birth date, death date, nationality, and we're back to my original point. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:34, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
But then WP:ONEATTRIBUTE would also go for those who are unusually fat/thin/tall/short, unusual deformities, and moving beyond purely physical attributes would also apply to those notable only for a particular skill. "Listifying" all longevity bios means excluding information normally thought relevant in coverage about people of extremely advanced age (their supposed "secret" to living so long, the differences they observed between their youth and the world of today, any issues with actually confirming their age, the point at which their age began to be recognised), none of which is WP:MILL stuff. FOARP (talk) 07:42, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

National and continental lists

I have compiled a summary of the current status of national and continental lists. Status as of 1 December 2018

List W / M D / L R / E V / U Total Nat. Limit 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117+
Belgium Belgian 20 / 3 22 / 1 21 / 2 20 / 3 23 23F+3M All 12 8 3 0 0 0 0 0
Netherlands Dutch (merged) 32 / 4 34 / 2 33 / 3 31 / 5[a] 36 29F+3M All 23 8 2 2 0 1 0 0
France French 103 / 4 103 / 4 102 / 5 104 / 3 107 295 100 8+[b] 42 33 13 9 1 0 1
Germany German 82 / 9 84 / 7 71 / 20 70 / 21 91 134 100 46+[c] 25+[c] 15 3 1 1 0 0
Italy Italian 106 / 9 106 / 9 107 / 8 109 / 6 115 — 100 39+[b] 35 24 10 2 3 1 1
Spain Spanish 66 / 12 76 / 2 70 / 8 65 / 13 78 64 All 37 23 8 4 4 1 1 0
Portugal Portuguese 10 / 2 12 / 0 9 / 3 11 / 1 12 19 All 1 4 2 2 2 1 0 0
Poland Polish (deleted) 3 / 0 2 / 1 3 / 0 3 / 0 3 21 All 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Denmark Danish 14 / 1 13 / 2 9 / 6 5 / 10 15 — All 8 5 0 1 0 1 0 0
Sweden Swedish 24 / 3 25 / 2 23 / 4 18 / 9 27 27
68[d]		 All 18 5 3 1 0 0 0 0
Norway Norwegian 16 / 3 19 / 0 14 / 5 17 / 2 19 20 All 12 5 2 0 0 0 0 0
Finland Finnish 8 / 2 10 / 0 10 / 0 10 / 0 10 10 All 6 3 1 0 0 0 0 0
United Kingdom British 113 / 7 113 / 7 110 / 10 110 / 10 120 — 100 28+[b] 49 20 14 7 2 0 0
Republic of Ireland Irish 10 / 0 9 / 1 3 / 7 10 / 0 10 — All 5 2 1 2 0 0 0 0
Europe Total Europe 54 / 2 51 / 5 51 / 5 55 / 1 56 — 50+5 244+[e] 235+[e] 115 54 25 11 2 2
Africa 9 / 1 10 / 0 3 / 7 8 / 2 10 — All 2 3 0 3 2 0 0 0
Canada Canada 74 / 6 74 / 6 68 / 12 65 / 15 80 — All 35 20 13 8 1 2 0 1
United States USA 137 / 9 103 / 43 110 / 10 142 / 4 146 — 100 16[f] 15+[f] 7+[f] 44+[b] 44 13 5 2
Rest of North America Missing data 9+[g] — All Missing data
South America 13 / 2 12 / 3 11 / 4 11 / 4 15 — All 2 4 3 3 2 0 1 0
Japan Japanese 114 / 8 88 / 34 120 / 2 118 / 4 122 —[h] 100 4+[i] 15+[i] 25+[i][b] 45 23 5 2 3
Asia except Japan 2 / 4 4 / 2 4 / 2 3 / 3 6 — All 1 2 0 3 0 0 0 0
Oceania 39 / 3 41 / 1 42 / 0 30 / 12 42 — All 18 10 10 3 1 0 0 0
  1. ^ Antonia Plaat-Kolenbrander is mistakenly listed as non-verified in this edit.
  2. ^ a b c d e Trimmed by national limit to 100 people
  3. ^ a b The national list on German Wikipedia includes many more people aged 110 and 111, who are no longer verified by the GRG.
  4. ^ Combining all four Nordic countries
  5. ^ a b Due to limits on national lists for France, Germany, Italy and UK, many people aged 110 and 111 are not accounted for.
  6. ^ a b c Includes only living people, probably not all of them
  7. ^ Several supercentenarians from Mexico are included in the List of the oldest living people, some from Barbados, Jamaica, Panama, and many territories of the Antilles at List of the oldest people by country, but there is no table grouping them at List of North American supercentenarians.
  8. ^ Japanese article 長寿 only includes the top 10 living Japanese men and women, the worldwide list of people over 115, and chronology of world's and Japan's oldest persons.
  9. ^ a b c Includes only a few of the living people

Looking at the age distribution, I would suggest the following course of action:

  • Green tickY Keep national lists which include a hundred people or close: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Canada, USA and Japan.
  • Red XN Redirect/merge national lists with fewer than 50 people: Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden
  •  Discuss – Trim the list of living Japanese to people over 112; there are too many aged 110 and 111 (probably hundreds, according to Japanese stats), GRG has stopped verifying those, and there is no way to know if a significant portion of them were "discovered".
  •  Discuss – Trim the list of living in the USA to people over 112, for the same reason
  • Improve coverage of German people by copying entries from the well-maintained national list on German wikipedia.
  • Within the List of supercentenarians by continent:
    • Red XN Expand the European list to the top 100 residents and 10 emigrants, for consistency with national lists and inclusion of some members of lesser-populated countries.
    • Green tickY Create a list of North American people besides USA and Canada (we have cases from Mexico, Barbados, Jamaica and other Antilles territories, scattered among various articles)
    • Work to find sources for Asian people besides Japan, especially China and India who must have hundreds of supercentenarians
    • Work to find sources for African people; lack of data there may be hopeless, but we should try.
    • Green tickY Consolidate GRG citations to as few sources as possible
    • Green tickY Improve markup, layout and sorting

Opinions? — JFG talk 14:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

  • I love the chart and I agree with all your recommendations except for expanding any list to 100 people. The top 50 is a more reasonable goal. Beyond some point the chance of error of omission is too high. Our confidence in the correctness of the rankings should decrease the more people we rank, and the relevance of the 68th or 97th most anyone or thing in a list is just not very high. Legacypac (talk) 22:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I also love the chart and most of your suggestions JFG, so I will only mention where we disagree. I think we should remove the emigrant list sections from all articles in the project as its useless fancruft and creates a maintenance nightmare of having to edit the same duplicate entries on list after list. I also disagree with expanding any more lists to 100 people. Rather, as there have been countless thousands of supercentenarians being one is clearly not notable. I support a minimum of 15 individuals and a maximum of 30 per country (for oldest ever sections - not including living sections), with a minimum age of 113 to be listed on country pages. Continuing to allow mass listing of individuals 110, 111, or 112 years old is both extremely time consuming and has less to do with building an encyclopedia and more to do with the legacy of just doing whatever the GRG used to do. They abused Wikipedia as a free place to list every supercentenarian they validated and what are these people really to others: they are just names with ages and life dates. You get the same amount of meaningful data with 30 entries as you do 100. I understand my proposal is very conservative, but Wikipedia is not a directory of old people nor a place to list copious amounts of horserace oldster data gleaned from birthday features. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:01, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Agree the emigrant lists are not helpful. If someone lives in the US list them there. These become a place to list 110 and 111 year olds because there are never more than a few people who got really old and moved away. Part of this emigrant tracking idea may be related the the GRG idea of tracking people by race, or more specifically four racial groups, which is strikes me as a little racist. Legacypac (talk) 00:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Emigrants

Please see the discussion at Talk:List of Japanese supercentenarians#Emigrants, where I have suggested a solution. — JFG talk 08:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Also suggested a merge of emigrants into the main lists at Talk:List of Italian supercentenarians#Emigrants and Talk:List of French supercentenarians#Emigrants. — JFG talk 12:25, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
French and Italian emigrants merged into the main list. Other people discovered or reshuffled while checking sources. — JFG talk 17:34, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Progress update

After a few weeks of feedback and pondering, here are my current thoughts:

  1. There was general consensus that splitting lists between residents and migrants was not helpful, so I have started merging them, with consensus on French and Italian lists, just boldly on some short lists. Launched discussions to get feedback before I invest time in merging the longer lists, see #Emigrants, step 2 below.
  2. There was a lot of pushback against the idea of expanding the European list to 100 entries, so it will stay at 50.
  3. There was general consensus to keep the national lists that are already at or approaching 100 entries. Will need to work on the German list, which can easily be expanded from the sources mentioned in German wikipedia.
  4. There was mixed response to the idea of merging smaller national lists into the lists by continent, because that would totally kill national information. I thought of letting a few national entries slip into the European list by raising that one to 100 people (which would guarantee inclusion of every European over 113), but as noted above there was no appetite to expand the EU list from its current 50-people limit. This state of affairs led me to support the status quo on national European lists, i.e. keeping full lists for the countries that have one. One exception is Poland, which was deleted at AfD because of difficulties in defining what was Poland at the time those people were born. That list had only 3 people, so we are not losing much.
  5. The list about Netherlands went through AfD and received a consensus to merge into the European list. The issue is that only two people out of 36 from the Netherlands currently qualify for the EU-50 list, so that we are losing a lot of information by redirecting. I would support re-instating this national list.
  6. I have done a lot of work to standardize the various lists within List of supercentenarians by continent, deduplicate sources, enable sorting, consistent layout; I feel that it is now a very usable page.
  7. Two discussions are open towards trimming the lists of living Japanese and Americans, in order to only keep people over 112, because the "younger" ones are too numerous and the top 100 for these countries are all way over 113 already. Please give your thoughts on the relevant talk pages (linked above as  Discuss).

Enjoy! — JFG talk 10:47, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Taiwo Olowo

The article on Taiwo Olowo seems like it's in this project's wheelhouse to clean up. Pinging Reyk, as he did an excellent job with getting the Habib Miyan disaster somewhat under control. Clearly a notable figure who should have an article, and much of what's there is good, but he has an absolutely outrageous longevity claim which the current article treats this with absolutely no skepticism. Perfect test case for handling some of the more far-fetched longevity claims. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:38, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

My removal of some categories was reverted. I opened a discussion at Talk:Taiwo Olowo, that should be a start. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:16, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
I'll try to take a look at this in the next few days. I'm a bit swamped at work right now, so free time is a a bit scarce. Reyk YO! 08:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
Sounds good. And I'll definitely stay on it myself. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:32, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Emigrants step 2

I have merged emigrants into the main national French and Italian lists per consensus, and boldly for Belgian, Danish and Norwegian lists. For other countries, I have opened discussions: American, British, Canadian, German, Spanish Swedish. Any interested editors are invited to participate. — JFG talk 06:38, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

All of the ones you've done look good. I'll certainly jump into the other discussions, I'd do more if I was more competent with handling tables. If nothing else, I hope all that goes a little smoother than the section immediately above has! The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:59, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Merging British and Irish lists

By definition, all Irish supercentenarians were British citizens at birth, before the partition of Ireland in 1921. Please see the merge proposal at Talk:List of British supercentenarians#Merge with Irish list. — JFG talk 22:57, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

All national lists should be based on the person's current nationality. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 02:49, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Agreed wherever they now or last lived. National lists are not based on race, and many people move from here to there, and if you live a long time in Europe especially the borders move around you. Legacypac (talk) 03:17, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
All national lists should be based on the person's current nationality. Why? Most emigrants keep their birth citizenship for life, and we have no way to find out for people on our lists. Additionally, in the USA, people with foreign origins tends to call themselves "Italian Americans" or "Chinese Americans", even when they are only second- or third-generation. Anyway, please comment on the merge proposal there. — JFG talk 15:03, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Remove separate list of living Japanese

Interested editors may wish to chime in at Talk:List of Japanese supercentenarians#Remove separate list of living people. — JFG talk 08:12, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

 Removed per consensus. — JFG talk 06:39, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

100 oldest ≠ GRG oldest

Interested editors may wish to comment on Talk:List of Italian supercentenarians#100 oldest ≠ GRG oldest. — JFG talk 07:14, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

AfD notice

Interested editors may wish to comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Irish supercentenarians. — JFG talk 06:39, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

What a farce that turned out to be. Wow. You'd think more than one person on that list was actually notable or something, or that maybe one of those people was actually, you know, Irish. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:40, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I missed this, the removal of fanfluff listcruft had been going so well! Next time...DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:51, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Gustav Gerneth

And no surprises here. The usual fanfluff, trivia and OR. 16:51, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

But he lives in a house with steep entrance stairs. That's important! EEng 17:29, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
And only alcohol at celebrations, that's crucial!! --Randykitty (talk) 17:54, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Wait until Russians tell us he was murdered by his son in 1950… — JFG talk 21:43, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Careful, though, the "keep everything age-related because The CabalTM is out for it" brigade will invariably attribute the non-notability argument to some vast conspiracy. Or something. Amazing how even non-GRG people fall into that trap. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:06, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I reverted it to a redirect and a minibio. If that's reverted I'd appreciate input on whether to bring it to a broader discussion. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:55, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Article has been restored. A broader discussion may be needed. — JFG talk 06:40, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
The restoration was reverted, and I've restored it again. Take it to AfD, rather than going through the back door again. schetm (talk) 18:06, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
It's the butter that does it, down with the margarine! --Randykitty (talk) 21:42, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
At which point it'll be "OMG KEEPKEEPKEEP AfD isn't for mergers." Reyk YO! 07:41, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
A few things to note:
  1. Unreferenced statements (e.g. OR) can be removed at any time per WP:BLP.
  2. There is a consensus (somewhere) that a claim that someone is "the xxth oldest", "first...xxx" etc must have a source stating that explicitly i.e. quoting a table (Wiki or GRG) is NOT sufficient.
  3. There is a also a consensus somewhere (a bit hard to trace now as it was on the talk page of a deleted article (I think) for longevity related biographies that only content directly related to their extreme longevity should be included.

DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:22, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Great. Now, take the article to AfD to determine consensus. If you can't trace it, it is useless. schetm (talk) 14:36, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Naming conventions for claims/myths

Right now we have a handful of longevity claims/Longevity myths biographies needing disambiguation. Most of these now just have, for instance, Isaac Brock (supercentenarian), which doesn't seem right since they're not actually verified supercentenarians. One other option is to do something like Henry Jenkins (extreme longevity claimant), though that seems a bit verbose too. I was thinking something like XXXXX XXXX (purported supercentenarian) or something along those lines. Thoughts? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:24, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Per WP:NCPDAB: "If possible, limit the tag to a single, recognizable and highly applicable term." Since there probably isn't a single word to use in disambiguation, "longevity claimant" should be preferred to "extreme longevity claimant." "Purported supercenterian" is probably too technical a disambiguation, and may not be "recognizable" enough. schetm (talk) 04:02, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable to me. Any other thoughts? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:39, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
As I heard no objections, per the above I moved 5 articles to XXXX XXXXXXX (longevity claimant). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:20, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
Good move(s). — JFG talk 07:49, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

RfC on sourcing for the 100 oldest Italians

Interested editors may want to participate in Talk:List of Italian supercentenarians#RfC: Defining the 100 known oldest people. — JFG talk 08:59, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Indian supercentenarians

What's the best course of action for the two pages in this category? Setting aside the uselessness of the category, there's no validation of their ages but they don't seem to be in serious dispute. I thought about moving these to the longevity claims category, which would empty the Indian category out and make for an easy C1 deletion. Thoughts? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:40, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. Also, the article about the judge really should be worked on; unlike so much of the dreck we've been sifting through, he seems like an eminently notable subject. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
Good find about the judge. I have added some information and links to his article + added him to our List of Asian supercentenarians. — JFG talk 18:05, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Oldest people

Editors interested in this project may care to contribute to the latest disagreement about the content of the above article. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 00:53, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Sources wanted for Lucy Hannah age dispute

Please see Talk:List of the verified oldest people#Lucy Hannah. — JFG talk 13:27, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Merge discussion

I've started a merge discussion proposing a merge of Henry Burling into List of supercentenarians by continent#Supercentenarians in Oceania. See Talk:List of supercentenarians by continent#Merger proposal. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:50, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

And another, long-overdue proposal for Gustav Gerneth, discussion at Talk:List of German supercentenarians#Merge proposal. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:13, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

More AfDs

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Govindananda Bharati and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Totapuri. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:48, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Draja Mickaharic. Newshunter12 (talk) 23:53, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

The Totapuri AfD was extended another week, still open. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:17, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
Also, I started WP:Articles for deletion/Jackson Pollock (longevity claimant). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:46, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
I also recently started AfD's for centenarians Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marco Feingold and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sheila Mercier. Newshunter12 (talk) 23:20, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
And I just started Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moloko Temo (2nd nomination). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:23, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Noah Raby (2nd nomination). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:31, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

And Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John B. Salling. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:59, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
Deletion of a redirect here: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 May 11#George Francis (supercentenarian). — JFG talk 11:50, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
And one more AfD, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Swami Kalyandev. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:22, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
Here is one more AfD, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gustav Gerneth. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:14, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

More RfCs about sourcing

After the success of Talk:List of Italian supercentenarians#RfC: Defining the 100 known oldest people, I have opened similar RfCs for Canada, France, Germany and Spain. Feel free to weigh in. Hopefully a firm consensus on sourcing will be established across the project. — JFG talk 09:37, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

So the criteria for inclusion is now what? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:11, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
I'd think something along the lines of what the Italian RfC suggested, in each country there are a few media sources besides the GRG which report on such things. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:07, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
So, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, again...ANYONE (think about it) who is reliably sourced can be included? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 23:42, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, per the general sourcing policy of Wikipedia. Disputed cases should be duly noted as such, and the nature of the dispute itself should be sourced. — JFG talk 08:03, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
Right. So there's no upper limit and anyone from this version or even this version of the longevity claims article can be included? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 09:46, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
No: there is no intent to include longevity claims that are absurd on their face; those have a dedicated page. I think we should continue to automatically disregard any reported age above the official longest-lived human, Jeanne Calment, and look at any cases age 115 or above with a particularly rigorous look at their sources. The update in sourcing acceptance is designed to accommodate the numerous cases of living or recently-dead people who have not been documented by "official" validators (and likely never will), while being well-covered by reliable sources in the press and being statistically plausible. — JFG talk 21:46, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
@DerbyCountyinNZ I agree with JFG that this is a necessary change. Look at the List of German supercentenarians, where the last native German on the GRG's list died in May 2015 and seven people have since reached age 112+ without being validated. Perhaps it's too much to say the GRG is dying, but stuff like that and the ever increasing lowest age on their list means we can no longer rely on just them alone for validation purposes. Newshunter12 (talk) 05:30, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
The GRG is indeed on shaky ground. If it is proven the Jeanne Calment was supplanted by her daughter than the "verification" distinction of supercentenarians falls down like a house of cards and the topic on Wikipedia should be reduced to nothing more than a trivial mention. However, despite the enthusiastic support of the anti-longevity/anti-GRG editors, the paper claiming the purported fraud cannot be considered to have anything like an adequate scientific approach. It is obviously aimed at disproving the status quo and any such approach (a common failing of conspiracy theorists and unqualified or self-promoting, would-be academics) fails scientific method and should be treated with the utmost caution. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:22, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
As the full criteria have not previously been agreed to, in every case where the new criteria is going to be applied it should be stated clearly, with the reasons why, on the relevant talk page. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:06, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
Definitely, and that's why I have launched all these RfCs. — JFG talk 23:10, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Major project overhaul proposal

Doesn't it seem a bit awkward that individual country lists are allowed 100 entries each, continent lists 50 entries each, and world lists back to 100 entries? I'm proposing this: country lists be limited to 25 entries each with a minimum inclusion age of 112, continent lists be expanded to 75 entries each with no age limit, and the world lists stay at 100 with no age limit. Country lists that don't have a SC count high enough to fill a 25 person article are deleted. Wikipedia is not a directory of old people and it is long overdue that it stops being a free webhost for GRG data. This plan would mean only the US, UK, Canada, Italy, France, and Japan would continue to have individual articles.

Notability doesn't fade, but all of these various lists were built around the GRG's verification data and they used to try to validate any claim they got. There was/is nothing notable about being on their lists. Lets face it: being 110 or 111 isn't in itself notable anymore and individual country lists have a lot more to do with nationalism then building a thorough encyclopedia, which is why there is such a discrepancy in how well maintained or not individual country articles are or what policies get enforced where.

Would an RfC(s) to establish these inclusion policies and then a group AfD of impacted articles be the best way to implement this plan? Community input is most welcome. Newshunter12 (talk) 00:17, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I was recently thiking along the lines of finding common structure for all lists and publishing it here on the project as "best practices". We've made a lot of progress since last year with regards to sourcing and consistency. And quite remarkably, we don't see much drama any longer – that's a win!
Coming to your plan, there have already been a few AfDs for the smallest national lists, but only Poland was eventually deleted, and that was 1) because there were only three people in there, 2) because there was no such thing as a stable Polish territory in the 19th and 20th century, so it was hard to even define who could call themselves Polish – it became an ethnicity question, and that's not a path we should follow. I recently raised an AfD for the list of Irish supercentenarians, which has only 10 entries, many of them pertaining to emigrants who are already in U.S., British or Canadian lists. In addition, all these people were British citizens because they were born before the partition of Ireland, and those who emigrated probably never got a distinct Irish citizenship. Nevertheless, participating editors were strongly opposed to deleting the page. I don't think there would be any agreement to deleting further lists. Perhaps the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish lists could be merged into a single one, like on the Swedish Wikipedia. The rest won't move.
I also found it strange that continental lists were shorter than national ones, but I got used to it; the question only arises for Europe anyway. Regarding the number of people to include, I think that it's fine to keep them at 100; this allows readers to compare the age profiles in various countries, and we have never had a shortage of maintainers to keep these lists up-to-date on a daily basis.
We have also gradually moved away from GRG legacy conventions: sourcing is now diversified, emigrants are no longer segregated in their own side lists, and we have removed the ad-hoc tables of living people, because they were non-notable, incomplete, and a maintenance headache. Now a living person reaching an advanced age will only get mentioned if they reach the top 100 ever from their country; that's low-maintenance and non-discriminatory, works pretty well.
Finally, a lot of WP:NOPAGE biographies were painstakingly eliminated, and the quality of the remaining bios has improved. People have stopped trying to reflexively create an article for every person in the top N list, and that's also refreshing.
In summary, I believe that we have moved along sufficiently towards upholding standard Wikipedian inclusion criteria, and I don't think the lists in their current shape need any significant trimming. I think it's time to consolidate what we learned into a set of project guidelines; then we can truly mark the Oldest People project as deprecated. Next steps would be to de-emphasize the tracking of individual people and to actually develop our articles about longevity-related topics. The {{Longevity}} navbox is a good place to start. — JFG talk 02:11, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
There used to be a Scandinavian region SC list on English Wikipedia, but it was eliminated years ago. You're welcome to merge the pages together on your own if you wish, but I'm skeptical a combined article would meet WP:LISTN, just as the continent articles besides Europe didn't, but were merged together anyway and have as of yet escaped being dealt with. I don't even think the individual articles on the Scandinavian countries pass WP:LISTN. The Polish article had been kept some months before at AfD before being deleted on its third go, so we shouldn't not try just because it might be hard.
Reading the Irish AfD, most of the keep votes stemmed from the mistaken belief that List of supercentenarians by continent passes WP:LISTN, so alleged sub-lists pass too. That article was randomly created through a group merge of all continents when I AfD'd the African list. If we held an RfC to remove the African, Asian, North/South American, and Australian listings none of which pass WP:LISTN (not even the GRG classifies people that way), that should remove a major impediment to further eliminating more country articles. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:58, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
Do I understand correctly that your preferred vision for supercentenarian lists would be to keep only two worldwide list of oldest people (all-time + living), national lists which are large enough (more than 25 people), and to get rid of the list by continents? What about the "oldest by country" list? My view is not far from there, except I believe we should keep the max count at 100 people per list everywhere. I'm a bit wary of losing continental lists though. It's a matter of finding the appropriate granularity to keep "big enough" or "logical enough" lists per region. Scandinavia is one of those natural regions; Oceania and Latin America would be two others. I also believe that an Asian list outside Japan is important, in order to explain that the absence of documented supercentenarians in those countries is not due to lack of old people, but rather to the lack of well-documented birth records and the lack of research. Whatever we eventually agree on, that should be codified as guidelines, appropriately sourced, and submitted to a community-wide RfC. — JFG talk 09:52, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
I would also support keeping the "oldest by country" list, the "oldest people" page, and the two claim/myth pages. The oldest by continent lists might be "convenient" for some, but that doesn't mean they pass WP:LISTN. Nobody else in the real world, not even the GRG, groups people that way. It's just long existing fancruft that should've been uprooted years ago. Otherwise, yes, you do seem to understand my point of view. Shorter country lists would be more meaningful as well, since as I already said Wikipedia is not a directory of old people, which is exactly what giant country lists of 100 people each serve as. Newshunter12 (talk) 16:20, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Just a note that I've seen this, it'll be a week before I can put forth any detailed proposal of my own but I'll happily comment on anything anyone else comes up with. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:34, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
@The Blade of the Northern Lights: Any chance to share your thoughts yet? — JFG talk 09:54, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder. I definitely support setting the threshold for national lists at 25 and having the two all-time and living lists. How to deal with the continents, though, I still don't know, though I agree there has to be some way of keeping the information about Asia. Perhaps we can come up with a set of regions (this would basically be for Europe and North America) and see how those would look. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:00, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
@The Blade of the Northern Lights @JFG So, I think we can proceed on this issue via RfC once JFG's round of inclusion criteria RfC's wrap up and the board is clear for new changes. What do you guys think? Are you going to be launching any more once the current round is done, JFG? Also, congratulations JFG for successfully eliminating both the oldest twin and longest marriages articles! You're a huge asset to this project, mate! Newshunter12 (talk) 12:25, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Animals in Category:Longevity claims

What do people here think about mixing oldest pet records in with human longevity claims? My thought is that such things should be their own separate categories or lists (something like Category:Longevity in pets or something like that, people who know categories better can probably find a better idea). Also, the category description certainly doesn't say anything about non-humans. There are enough of them currently in there, though, that just removing them without discussion could be controversial, so input is appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:00, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Reupping, I'm trying to clear the tubes on this category (I've purged a bunch of people who clearly didn't fit in it, and added a couple too) so having a definite answer would help. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:06, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
One more ping. I'm happy to remove these articles from the longevity claims category, but first I want to know if anyone has some other category to move them into. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
@The Blade of the Northern Lights I support just removing them and not putting them into a new category. Human and animal longevity shouldn't have been mixed in the first place, and such a new sub category would be fancruft and breed more fancruft. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:49, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Fine by me. Barring any objections I'll commence in a few hours. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:52, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
And it is done. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:44, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Gustav Gerneth merge

The article on Gustav Gerneth was merged into List of German supercentenarians following an AfD and a merge discussion. The merge was then reverted, so that further discussion is needed. — JFG talk 08:17, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Lists of oldest twins and longest marriages nominated for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of oldest twins (2nd nomination). — JFG talk 09:53, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Lon marriages too: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people with the longest marriages (2nd nomination) — JFG talk 10:00, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
While we're at it, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cormac Ó Comáin. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
And renominating one of the no consensus discussions on the table above, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adelina Domingues (3rd nomination). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:26, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
RfD at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 June 10#Bernando LaPallo. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:28, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
There is a new article created in the past few days and added to the longevity template, called List of last surviving veterans of military engagements. It has sources, but seems super fanfrufty listing last survivors of individual battles or any vague kind of military action like Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch. Seems pretty WP:INDISCRIMINATE to me. What do you guys think? Should we AfD it? Newshunter12 (talk) 16:07, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
I thought it was pretty much listcruft. Looks like it's been separated from List of last survivors of historical events, which is itself listcrufty! DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 17:48, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. Definitely into INDISCRIMINATE territory. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:45, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback, guys. The AfD discussion for this article can be found here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of last surviving veterans of military engagements. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:51, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

More discussions

The Cormac O Comáin discussion was relisted, and the Bernando LaPallo RfD is still open. I also just started WP:Articles for deletion/Fulla Nayak (2nd nomination). I think we're finally getting close to clearing everything out; once these discussions settle down I have a couple merge proposals, and possibly another couple AfDs, but I don't want to overwhelm the processes here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:45, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

It's back

Look what's back: List of people in long marriages. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:54, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

And List of last surviving veterans of military engagements was kept despite miserably failing policy and being a non-existent grouping in the real world. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:59, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Jeanne Calment

There is currently an ongoing discussion and vote about whether or not there is an age dispute surrounding Jeanne Calment worth mentioning on the List of the verified oldest people. All interested editors can join the discussion here: Talk:List of the verified oldest people. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:50, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Randykitty Sorry about that. In the heat of the moment, I couldn't help add that last sentence, which I have removed so as not to taint the debate. I will be more careful next time. Newshunter12 (talk) 09:39, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, we all get carried away from time to time. Thanks for correcting your post. --Randykitty (talk) 09:45, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Most of the participants at this wikiproject, barring myself, generally share an outlook on the scope of this wikiproject and longevity articles in general, and discussion invitations posted here do tend to look like canvassing. I'd encourage any discussion invitations posted here to also be posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject World's Oldest People which still has 50 talkpage watchers and whose participants generally took a different view. Perhaps that would serve to get more diverse viewpoints to the table than those represented at this wikiproject. schetm (talk) 13:47, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
There are a diverse range of viewpoints on this project and I strongly oppose any special requirements being conjured up for editors who utilize this page. The old project is also dead and buried. People come here now to discuss the topic of longevity. Newshunter12 (talk) 16:01, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
This talk page has at least twenty fewer watchers than does the old one, which has fifty. Most of the participants here seem to !vote as a block at AfDs which indicates there's not as diverse a range of viewpoints as you claim. Seeing as there's no policy against what I propose, I'll be taking it upon myself, so as to cast the widest net possible and involve the fifty talk page watchers there and so as not to "conjure up" any "special requirements" "for editors who utilize this page". I'd certainly encourage and welcome any assistance. My view is that the former project participants will be able to improve WP:LONGEVITY, and we should go to further lengths to bring them over here. schetm (talk) 16:46, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Consensus is undesirable if it only reflects the views of a few. I think it's always preferable to have a raft of No Consensus outcomes with 15 !voters than a bunch of keep or delete outcomes with 5 !voters.schetm (talk) 17:22, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Maggie or no Maggie?

Further editor input is needed at Talk:List of American supercentenarians#Maggie Kidd. — JFG talk 15:13, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Editors should note that the edits referenced under this thread include the removal of entries on the basis that they are not verified by the GRG. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 05:29, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
@DerbyCountyinNZ Maggie Kidd's death made me recheck the above talk page and I realized the archive bot is not working there due to page renaming. Could you please fix it like you did Talk:List of the oldest living people? Thank you! Newshunter12 (talk) 06:54, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
The archive bot is working perfectly. It's set to 180 days, so the next one to be archived, barring any further contributions, will be "100 oldest ≠ GRG oldest", which should go about 6 October. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 08:12, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Are we talking about the same article because I don't see any thread like that on Talk:List of American supercentenarians? I see one thread from 2010, three from 2018, and three from 2019 that at 180 days of age would archive before October. The bot last archived in May 2018, so something must be off with it. There is a thread titled "100 oldest ≠ GRG oldest" on the Italian page - did you look at that by mistake? Newshunter12 (talk) 08:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought you meant this article. I've fixed Talk:List of American supercentenarians. It should start archiving properly again in 24 hours. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 09:25, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

New RfC on Italian list article

There is currently an ongoing RfC at Talk:List of Italian supercentenarians#RfC: List of 20 vs. list of 100 to decide if the list should enumerate the 20 oldest Italians or the 100 oldest Italians. All interested editors can join the discussion there. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:12, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Recent death in Italy

The recent death of Maria Giuseppa Robucci prompted the creation of a mostly-empty article. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maria Giuseppa Robucci. — JFG talk 23:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

GRG photo galleries

Are GRG photo galleries, such as those found here considered reliable sources for determining place of birth and death? The question has come up in this revert, where it was asserted that they're not RS. These specific sources doesn't appear to have been evaluated per a scan of WP:RSN and the old WP:WOP. I'm inclined to take this to RSN, but I want to know first if any previous ruling has been made about it. @Newshunter12 may want in on this. schetm (talk) 03:08, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I would point out that Johanna Klink is listed as in Limbo in Table E, which is what we deem a reliable source for the GRG, yet the photo gallery has made a definitive statement about when she died for years. It clearly has different reliability standards then Table E. The galleries are also very blog-like and are similar in unreliability to the pending list, which has long been considered to be an unreliable source. Thank you for taking this here schetm and pinging me, and not edit warring. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:28, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

William Coates

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William Coates (longevity claimant) (2nd nomination). — JFG talk 11:29, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Questionable editor

I just reverted an editor by the name of DanielNavott on List of the oldest living people, who made a seemingly "helpful" edit according to his edit summary, but actually obviously screwed up the table. Looking at their few edits on other pages, it seems to me like they are engaged in slow-motion plausibly-deniable vandalism on various pages (ex. altering wording in unhelpful ways). Does anyone else agree or do their other edits seem constructive to you? Can an admin get on this? Newshunter12 (talk) 06:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I think this editor was trying to get the table to display properly on mobile. It seems that the automatic row indexer screws up the formatting there. I consider this a bug in the mobile app, need to document it properly. — JFG talk 07:07, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Possible, but that still wouldn't account for their other edits. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Hard to tell if they are being a sneaky low-level vandal or are merely incompetent. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 07:10, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Fair analyses. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about list of 100 verified oldest men

There is currently an ongoing discussion at Talk:List of the verified oldest people#Long term dilemma with the Men's list to decide what option might be the best way to handle the fact that GRG validations of male SC's are functionally extinct, given the last was in May 2018, and the ramifications this has on the list of 100 verified oldest men. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:44, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Elizabeth Williams Berry

Per the article, she's eminently notable, which is certainly a nice change of pace. What do people here make of her age? I can't find anything on the GRG about her, and while the sources are generally in agreement about birth/death they also have contradictory information about things like when she married (for instance, one says she married at 43, which would have been enormously unusual). Seems like a decent test case for how to handle non-GRG validated ages. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:55, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

She retired from (presumably professional) riding in 1911, which would make her 57. Extremely unlikely that a woman would have been riding professionally at that age. Sounds highly dubious to me. One of the press clippings says "Ninety-two-year-old "Mother" Berry, looking not a day over 60..." and most of the articles seem to be based on what she told the reporters. Without some evidence of her DoB or her early riding career it is most likely an exaggeration of the facts on her part. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 21:58, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Her whole life checks out, except the birth date: looks more like a local legend developed about her age. Also, the picture labeled "at age 113" looks like a person in her 80s or 90s at most. File this under Longevity claims, or just ignore it. If somebody has access to U.S. newspaper archives, it would be worth checking if anybody reports on her 100th birthday in allegedly 1954 (one such paper is cited, and states that she rode for 24 years under a man's name -- which if true, would not be consistent with her retiring at age 57, as her riding career would have started when she was 33, which does not make sense). Or if somebody could look for a marriage certificate of 1903, or any racing reports of the early 1900s. — JFG talk 20:27, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Mmmmhhh... The "100th birthday" article[6] is plagiarized from the "97th birthday" article.[7] All her quotes are verbatim copied from the 97th into the 100th:
  • "People can't realize I'm 97, you know. I cook my own food and cut my own wood." v. same sentence with "100"
  • "I raced in England when Queen Victoria was alive, and old Gladstone."
  • "No, I'm not going to ride any more horses. I've got a damned sight more sense."
Other articles state that she started her racing career at age 13, so adding the 24 years in which she is supposed to have raced, that makes her 37 upon retirement: much more plausible, and she would have been born in 1874 and died aged 94. Her recollection of "racing when Queen Victoria was alive" still fits in, as Berry would have started her career in 1887, and Victoria died in 1901. — JFG talk 21:17, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Let's put it this way. The big thing is multiple sources state that she did ride as a jockey, disguised as a man. People in those days didn't necessarily keep track of their birth certificates, so we can't prove a negative. She moved around a great deal, which makes sense if she was trying to maintain a disguise. Given all that, she easily could have put off marriage until she was in her 40s or 50s and getting old for racing. She also never had any kids. So that much is plausible. We are using the best sources we have available. The article that had the photo and said she was 113 is sourced at Commons and if anyone has newspapers.com access, they can find it. To be honest, none of us can say what a 5'2" woman who lived an active outdoor life would look like at 80 or 90 versus 100+. She "stopped riding horses" in her 50s which doesn't mean she stopped jockeying then, as many trainers of racehorses continue to ride, just not in races, so it could also mean she just literally stopped riding... which some people do in their 50s...but you never know. Also, note that today, jockeys like Mike Smith are still jockeying into their 50s. Russell Baze jockeyed into his late 50s and I think Scott Stevens is pushing 60. Montanabw(talk) 22:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • But at the end of the day, I'm not going to go to the mat about her age, because we can only assess what the source material says, so if someone wants to propose language at the talkpage for how to finesse the unknowable, we can. But the idea that she got married in her 40s is most definitely plausible, and "stopped riding in 1911" could be taken two ways, and a few jockeys do race into their 50s, though it's uncommon. As for "plagiarism, she probably started repeating herself as she aged, if you go over all the source material, it is very duplicative, she clearly had a standard rap down. Montanabw(talk) 23:13, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Some additional source material:
  1. 1960 not a 24-year jockeying career, but a claim that she started racing at age 24 (which contradicts other claims that she started racing at 13, though she might not have been legally able to do so at a professional level until she was over 21, and so she might have started lying about her age way back then... but who knows?
  2. 1946 this is the article where they say she is 92.
  3. 1954 age 100
  4. this and this is one of the longest stories.

Those seem to be the ones with the most unique material. I may some articles stored offline if anyone wants to email, but most are of the "Mother Berry's annual birthday" type and are pretty repetitive. I think most of the unique ones are either in the article or posted here. So, whatever folks want to do, this is what I've got. If people can find more stuff, that would be cool. My newspapers.com subscription expired. Montanabw(talk) 23:30, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I had a poke around, but could not find much more than places to look. Australian newspapers of the period are open access (you can even improve the transcript and get a completed citation template: "FEMALE JOCKEY". Bell's Life In Sydney And Sporting Reviewer. Vol. II, , no. 51. New South Wales, Australia. 4 July 1846. p. 2. Retrieved 18 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) ), and the Trove website might throw out another story https://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=female+jockey Nice article, I'm guessing the age is a furphy. cygnis insignis 02:12, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
interesting stuff, but of course if she was successful in her deception, there would be no records of her as a woman jockey in Australia. And, given recordkeeping in that time, a rider might also be permitted to just quietly slip over to another country, which she clearly did. I did try to search for records of a jockey named Jack Williams in AU or the UK, bit I’m not an expert at locating 120+ year old racing records in those nations. Montanabw(talk) 03:51, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
This is more for categorization purposes than anything else, honestly, and as stated above a decent test case for how to handle subjects from before modern validation techniques. I want to emphasize that this is a really good article, quite well-written and a fascinating story, and is an excellent addition wherever it ends up fitting in the longevity suite. Thank you for your hard work on it! The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:36, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words, The Blade of the Northern Lights. Much of the credit goes to Megalibrarygirl on this one, she did the article, I was just the researcher and tweaked a few things. I take no position on whether you want to categorize her as a supercentenarian. She was, we can all agree, quite a character. It’s also possible that she had a motive to lie about her age when she was young and then just kept on doing so; but we cannot prove it in either direction, most likely. Montanabw(talk) 03:51, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
I found the couple's census record in 1910, from King County, WA:[8]
  • J. B. Berry, 49, from Massachusetts, veterinary surgeon, on his second marriage
  • Elizabeth Berry, 54, from Australia (parents from Wales), wife (first marriage), immigrated 1909, no profession, no children.
Looks legit, despite contradiction with a source that places the wedding in 1903. If her declared age is correct, that makes the lady born in 1855 or 1856, not 1854. This particular census record was produced on 15 April 1910, and asks for "age at last birthday", so born on 21 June 1855 to be 54 years old on census day. Unless she had been fudging her age earlier still, perhaps to be accepted in races, as speculated by other editors. — JFG talk 04:39, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Always happy to put in a good word, and Megalibrarygirl does indeed deserve a shout-out. Whatever comes of her age, I've added her to the disambiguation page Jack Williams; the other person there who used the name as a pseudonym didn't have birth/death dates, so at least there it shouldn't be an issue. And, if the sources are consistent on her age, though speculation is perhaps warranted somewhere else (Guinness had an excellent comment about the general problem of age verification) Wikipedia should go with what we have. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:49, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment Finding Australian sources is probably going to be impossible - there were several registrations of babies called Elizabeth Williams in Victoria in 1854, let alone the years before and after - and there were other jockeys called Jack Williams, too. Other American records just add to the confusion: on her husband's death records (for James B. Berry, Helena, Montana, horse trainer, 1927), her name is given as Mary - and she was the informant! On the 1920 census, her name is written as "Un" - presumably unknown? That gives her date of arrival as 1908, naturalisation in 1909 (but under what name??), and age as 66. (I know we can't use primary sources, but I was intrigued - and they seem to deepen the mystery rather than enlighten us! RebeccaGreen (talk) 11:25, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
    Ok, we're deep into WP:OR, but it's useful to keep digging, perhaps something usable will come out. If you have access to birth records in the state of Victoria, it should be easy to narrow down the various "Elizabeth Williams" by name of the parents. I'd search on the declared birthday of June 21 across several years. No idea if there are any records of professional jockeys that have survived, but certainly a career spanning "thousands" of wins should have attracted the attention of the Australian, British and French press, if we just look at the countries where she says she raced. — JFG talk 23:06, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
    I’m just finding this fascinating. RebeccaGreen, can you point me to the source material you found? I found some links to census data here but the site they are using requires a subscription. As for thousands of wins, don’t count on finding them, if she moved from nation to nation, her record wouldn’t move with her...even today, Equibase only tracks wins in the US and Canada, Europe might as well be another planet...and I don’t know if Racing Post tracks wins in other nations beyond the UK and Ireland. For an intellectual exercise, try figuring out the worldwide record for Frankie Dettori, and he lives now when we has “teh interwebz” to use...also, jockeys were working stiffs, few were celebrities the way some are today...and Berry would have motive to stay out of the limelight. Montanabw(talk) 07:10, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
@Montanabw:, I found them on Ancestry.com, to which I have a subscription:
  • 1920 United States Federal Census, Year: 1920; Census Place: Helena, Lewis and Clark, Montana; Roll: T625_972; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 93. Name: James B Berry; Age: 54; Birth Year: abt 1866; Birthplace: Massachusetts; Father's Birthplace: Massachusetts; Mother's Birthplace: Massachusetts; Occupation: Vetenary Surgeon. Spouse: Un. Berry; Age: 66; Birth Year: abt 1854; Birthplace: Australia; Immigration Year: 1908; Naturalized: yes; Naturalization year: 1909; Relation to Head of House: Wife; Spouse's name: James B Berry; Father's Birthplace: Wales; Mother's Birthplace: Wales; Occupation: none.
    Ancestry.com. Montana, County Births and Deaths, 1830-2011, Montana State Historical Society; Helena, Montana; FHL Roll: 25-5. Name: Doctor James B Berry; Gender: Male; Death Age: 60; Birth Date: 1 Mar 1867; Birth Place: Mass.; Death Date: 28 Jun 1927; Death Place: State Fair Grounds, Helena, Lewis and Clark, Montana, USA; Occupation: Horse trainer; Spouse: Mary Berry; Informant: Mrs. Berry, Helena, Montana; Cause of death: Carcinoma of the lip and jaw.
I haven't yet found their marriage. RebeccaGreen (talk) 09:48, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
@JFG: You said, "If you have access to birth records in the state of Victoria, it should be easy to narrow down the various "Elizabeth Williams" by name of the parents." Do we have the name of the parents? It might be on a marriage or naturalisation certificate, but I haven't found either yet. The index of registration doesn't have the birth date, just the year of registration (usually the birth year, unless they were born very late in the previous year, or not registered in time). The birth date may not be right, either .... Yes, this is WP:OR, but if that gives us more names of places or people to target our searches for the subject better, we might find RS. The more you know, the easier it is to find sources, I often find ... RebeccaGreen (talk) 09:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Alf Smith

Just a heads up: I have reverted edits made to List of British supercentenarians and List of the verified oldest people over the final age of Alf Smith of Scotland. Multiple major reliable sources, such as this and this state Mr. Smith died on the evening of Saturday, August 3rd. I counted the days on a calendar since his last birthday to double check and it comes to 127. The 128 number being repeated by some media often still saying he died on Saturday is because a local official tweeted Smith died at 111 years and 128 days old. He was wrong though, as any calendar will tell you, if what the BBC said is true: "The former lorry driver and farmer, from St Madoes, Perthshire, died on Saturday night." Please help keep an eye on these articles, as this probably won't be the last time a well meaning editor changes articles based on this apparent media error. Oldest in Britain states he died on the 4th and given their fan club, it seems a forgone conclusion this issue is not over. Newshunter12 (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Cecilia Seghizzi

Project members might like to have a look at the edit history of the above article. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 18:43, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Rude bugger. David in DC (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
I agree calling someone a immature ignorant peasant is very rude. https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Cecilia_Seghizzi&diff=908824844&oldid=908822152. 103.120.66.100 (talk) 23:20, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
I've stricken my unhelful comment above. I apologize. David in DC (talk) 19:04, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
That's "an" not "a". DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:41, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
I see the talkpage of that article is empty. Perhaps discussing the matter there, without hurling less-than-grammatical insults around, would bring this to some resolution. And that'll be after your rangeblock expires. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:46, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
I've started the suggested talk page thread here. David in DC (talk) 19:02, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Virginia McLaurin

The article Virginia McLaurin has been nominated for deletion. Interested editors can join the ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virginia McLaurin. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:26, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

People who lived in three different centuries

Just a general question to this project: Is there a category or list on Wikipedia of (verified) people who lived in three different centuries (eg. Emma Morano who lived in the 19th, 20th and 21st Century), and is there an offical term for such a person (eg. Triple-centurian)? Calistemon (talk) 15:36, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Guys, the questioner was likely asking a sincere question, not looking to make troublesome edits. You really shouldn't give snarky answers to seemingly sincere questions. This is a WikiProject. We should expect to receive general questions about longevity here. Randykitty, as an admin, you especially should know better and should make a better effort to answer good-faith questions in kind, striving to "model appropriate standards of courtesy and civility to other editors." Consider this your WP:TROUTing. Calistemon, I apologize for my colleagues' incivility. To answer your question, I'm not aware of any specific term for the specific instances you mention. schetm (talk) 06:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Chitetsu Watanabe

This should be nipped in the bud before it spawns others...DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:39, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion here schetm (talk) 06:37, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Goldie Michelson

Another recreation of a deleted article. Speedy deletion tag removed, IMO inappropriately. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 02:33, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Nominated here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:03, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

List of the oldest living people

There is an ongoing discussion at Talk:List of the oldest living people regarding the size of the article's list. Interested editors may join the discussion there. Newshunter12 (talk) 21:14, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

There is now an RfC at Talk:List of the oldest living people regarding the size of the article's list. Interested editors may join the discussion there. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:16, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

RfC on sourcing for the verified oldest people

Editors are invited to comment at Talk:List of the verified oldest people#RfC on sourcing. — JFG talk 08:23, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Sophia De Muth

Editors may be interested in joining the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sophia De Muth as it relates to this topic area. Newshunter12 (talk) 05:36, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

More for possible AfD or RfD

I don't have the time right now to nominate for AfD or RfD, but will try to begin processing these soon. In the meantime, any are welcome to create their own nomination or provide evidence why they should remain as is before I do so.

Laura Scales Not finding sources on this woman and all those in the article are affiliated with her employer or are self-published materials.

Jones Morgan All sources self-published, except one print newspaper source we don't have access to and possibly doesn't actually exist. Found a brief obit here.

Peter Mills (enslaved person) Recently created, with two print sources that can't be reviewed. Not finding any coverage.

Helen Stetter is a redirect to nowhere, as she is no longer old enough to appear on List of American supercentenarians.

Alexina Calvert is a redirect to nowhere, as she is no longer old enough to appear on List of British supercentenarians.

Nijiro Tokuda is a redirect to nowhere, as he is no longer old enough to appear on List of the verified oldest people or List of Japanese supercentenarians.

Dumitru Comănescu does not appear on Oldest people, never had an article, and was only recently created as a redirect. His 59th place entry on the men's list at List of the verified oldest people does not warrant a redirect.

Erminia Bianchini Recently created redirect of deceased woman briefly oldest living person in Italy at slightly 112+. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:09, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Delete all including the redirects. None of them are notable or have sufficient reliable sources to establish any possible notability. Mostly just longevity fanfluff. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 09:56, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 July 7#Helen Stetter regarding the redirects of Helen Stetter, Alexina Calvert, and Nijiro Tokuda editors may be interested in participating in. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 July 8#Dumitru Comănescu and at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 July 8#Erminia Bianchini editors may be interested in participating in. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:35, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm rather busy of late, so I will leave it to others to create AfD's for Laura Scales, Jones Morgan, and Peter Mills (enslaved person). Newshunter12 (talk) 03:15, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Laura Scales editors may be interested in participating in. Newshunter12 (talk) 14:40, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
Keep the redirects to an entry on a list per WP:CHEAP. Delete the redirects where the target doesn't appear. The Scales article can go, maybe the Morgan article. Do a bit more work on Peter Mills before you nuke it - being the last surviving former slave is undoubtedly notable. schetm (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Maria Roszak

As I don't read Polish, and I'm not familiar with the notability guidelines for clergy, I'm unsure about this. Not nominating it for AfD just yet, but I'm unclear on exactly what she personally would be notable for. I see she got some recognition for being part of an organization involved in the Jewish resistance during WWII, and that she got recognition in Kraków media for reaching 110, but that seems to be it. The Polish article on her is actually even shorter and has 2/3 the sourcing. But since this is definitely more substantive than the typical "born, lived an unusually long time, shuffled off the mortal coil", thought this was worth mentioning here; if she is actually notable, I'd happily add some new material to the article too. (Also, although it was previously deleted per G5, another user in good standing restored it and did some work on it, so that criterion isn't applicable) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:25, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Any takers here? Still not sure what to do with this article, would appreciate some assistance. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:07, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Typical longevity fan article. She would never have got an article if she hadn't made it to 110. The Polish article wasn't created until she died and only then did someone find an earlier article on her. Barely scrapes above the "born, lived long, died" scenario. I'd support deletion on the basis of GNG and WP:OTHERLANGS. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 03:37, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
After reviewing the article, I would support deletion under WP:GNG. Just a longevity fan type article of someone with a more interesting story then they like bacon or the infamous one that was mostly about their love of potatoes. Newshunter12 (talk) 05:00, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion at WP:Articles for deletion/Maria Roszak (2nd nomination). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:47, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fredie Blom. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:27, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

And another one now at WP:Articles for deletion/Anton Adner. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:41, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:List of the verified oldest people requires broader input

This thread is currently at an impasse. Please contribute to the discussion so that WP:CONSENSUS can be reached. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 07:20, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Francisca Susano

Another non-notable longevity claimant up for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Francisca Susano. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 02:26, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Hester Ford

Hester Ford is the oldest living person in the United States following the death of Alelia Murphy on November 23, 2019. Based on my minimal research so far, it looks like thats the only major thing she is well known for (her age). As I don't know much about the guidlines/rules regarding a seperate article for a person who has lived a long time, is Hester Ford noteable enough to deserve her own article? If not, where should I merge some of the articles information?

Now listed for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hester Ford.
@Greshthegreat I have no doubt you made this article in good faith, but as a long time editor in this topic area, please listen that it was a mistake. Being the "oldest x" or reaching any age is never a notability reason for creating an article. There have been many thousands of supercentenarians and very few are notable. All important information in the article (name, birth date, nationality), as well her current age, was already listed at List of American supercentenarians and List of the verified oldest people. Please support deletion and please refrain from creating more articles like this one in the longevity field. This is the place for articles like that. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:13, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Recreated and returned to AfD. Courtesy link for interested editors. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hester Ford (2nd nomination) StarM 23:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Hester Ford again

The article has been re-created and speedy delete contested on her talk page (for the usual longevity fanfluff reasons). I see no content in the current article which demonstrates more notability than the previously (unanimously) deleted article. I don't have time this weekend to do the Afd so will get around to it next week if no-one else gets to it first. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 22:00, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Whoops, missed this thread when I dropped the link to AfD up top. Apologies. StarM 23:34, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Project overhaul proposal

There are nearly two dozen supercentenarian lists, primarily consisting the suite of " oldest by country" lists. These sprawling lists of people overwhelmingly lacking any lasting notability are of dubious value as is, and are prone to lapses in entry quality standards or being a walled garden. A long-term solution would be a way to centralize a reduced data set into several lists.

I propose this: Keep Oldest people, List of the oldest living people, and List of the verified oldest people as they are; merge all country lists into an expanded List of the oldest people by country that allows say 5 women and men per country (number negotiable), and convert the various List of supercentenarians by continent lists into 75-100 strong lists of the oldest from those continents, instead of the present Asia (but without Japan!) or North America (without the United States or Canada!) business.

This would accomplish many positive changes. It would be easier to maintain the lists, eliminate the "Notable supercentenarians from other Asian countries​" list that includes seven men and one woman that doesn't remotely reflect real-world SC statistics, eliminate entry cruft (ex. Maria Schmitz F 27 August 1886 22 October 1996 110 years, 56 days Rhineland North Rhine-Westphalia), and defuse the time-bomb of allowing 100-strong lists of the oldest people from every country on Earth.

Would the community support such a proposal to keep the best, most notable content, in a more centralized organized fashion and do away with the rest? Pinging @TFBCT1, who is not a member of this project, but who has done more then any other to maintain the various supercentenarian lists for over a decade. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:21, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I suppose all those minibios that were merged into these lists should be restored to stand-alone pages? schetm (talk) 04:13, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
@schetm I wouldn't do anything yet since this is just a proposal, but you are right that the minibio issue would need further discussing, likely to result in at least some re-creations. A vetting process would likely be needed, as not every mini-bio was an article and do ones like Lucy Hannah, that objectively add nothing, really need to be restored? Also, many minibios that used to be articles, such as Nabi Tajima, were closed as delete and redirect (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nabi Tajima (2nd nomination), not merge. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:28, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
Despite, or perhaps because of, the considerable effort that several maintainers, including myself, have put into curating those lists, I agree that the longest lists are only statistically interesting. I would support replacing all national lists by continental lists. There is no notable encyclopedic distinction between French, Belgian, Austrian or Swiss supercentenarians, or between "American" (U.S.) and Canadian figures. Given the fluctuations of history along supercentenarian lifetimes, groupings by continent would be less prone to controversy than groupings by nations (should ethnic Poles born in Prussia and living in present-day Lithuania be considered German supercentenarians?).
A list of the 100 oldest documented people by continent would seem sufficient. Perhaps a list of the 20 oldest men by continent should be added, in order to offset the much longer lifespan of women. An additional benefit would be to essentially limit entries to people who reached 113+ years of age, for whom more coverage is often available, and who have attracted more scrutiny to weed out doubtful cases.
However, continental lists would necessarily include more entries from the most populous countries, e.g. people from USA would fill 80% of the entries on the Americas list, so that may be perceived as unfair to people from other countries, as #5 in Mexico probably enjoys more local notability than say #75 in the USA. One interesting facet of the current lists is that they allow comparison of lifespans in various countries ; we would lose this distinction as some countries would dominate the continental lists (USA for Americas, Japan for Asia, France, Italy and UK for Europe), leaving very few entries for people from other countries.
The idea of listing the top 5 oldest by country would probably make the "oldest by country" page quite bloated and hard to maintain with ~200 independent countries on Earth: I would keep that one as is, with only the oldest ever and oldest living man/woman by country.
Upon further reflection, I'm not convinced the proposed changes would improve clarity for our readers. Additionally, while there are several national sources tracking their elder citizens, I am not aware of good sources grouping people by continent, so that our continental lists would be mostly synthesis. (Granted, they already are SYN, but at least they are not the only source of information on supercentenarians in the encyclopedia.)
At this stage, I would wait for further comments by interested editors before putting any effort into this proposal. — JFG talk 10:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Testing the impact of the main suggestion (getting rid of national lists). Given the discrepancies in available data, I would group people into only three broad continental zones:
  • Americas: 81 people from USA, 6 from Canada, 7 from South America, 6 from Central America, youngest is 113 years 312 days
  • Europe + Middle East + Africa: 30 people from France, 7 from Germany, 17 from Italy, 4 from Portugal, 11 from Spain, 23 from UK, 8 from elsewhere, youngest is 113 years 37 days
  • Asia + Oceania: 93 people from Japan, 5 from Australia, 1 from New Zealand, 1 from India (also British), youngest is 112 years 326 days
How would that feel? — JFG talk 11:46, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
I could support your last proposal to replace all national lists with three broad continental lists. I think your statement that the "current lists […] allow comparison of lifespans in various countries" is misguided, in that life expectancy in a given country and raw number to avoid the grim reaper for awhile are two very different data points. The national lists are ultimately a holdover from the GRG (hence why Brazil has no list, despite a very large number of cases), while WP:LISTPURP would allow us to group cases in continental lists. The purpose of a continental grouping is not to build a mythos or "reigns" around "oldest x in the Americas" or "oldest y in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa", but to be a "bookcase" to house a logical grouping of data. Besides GRG lists, very few cases on the national lists ever garnered national or international coverage; it's a mix of birthday coverage and local prefecture reports cobbled together under the auspices of nationhood we have been conditioned to see as a normal and right grouping of the elderly.
Don't forget the hodgepodge of oldest living person in the country sub-lists that used to proliferate in the country articles. Sprawling national list articles have always been more a mix of fanfiction and fanfluff then notable information. We could even add a little disclaimer, like the dynamic list disclaimer, that the groupings are arbitrary. I'm fine with a list of 20 men per continent if the country lists are eliminated. The five men and women per country idea was a compromise proposal I personally am fine with dropping. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:03, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Lucy Hannah redirect

I have nominated the Lucy Hannah redirect for deletion because there is no longer any content about this person on the target page List of American supercentenarians. Please comment at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 29#Lucy Hannah. — JFG talk 23:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Kane Tanaka

Anyone still interested in this project may care to contribute to the latest dispute in this article. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:35, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Blue zone lists

If I write articles titled "List of Oldest Sardinians," "List of Oldest Icarians," etc, would these articles meet WP:N? The majority of Wikipedia lists related to longevity are based on nation states (ex. List of American supercentenarians); however, it seems to me that there is particular interest in Blue Zones and their relationship to longevity. These lists would thus be regionally-focused as opposed to nationally-focused. I am asking here because I do not want to go through the work of creating the pages if they will ultimately be deleted for not meeting notability. Thanks GreenVolvox (talk) 22:46, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I doubt they would meet WP:N. They would appear to be the same sort of longevity fanfluff that got deleted in a few years ago. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 23:13, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
DerbyCountyinNZ, thanks for weighing in but I'm not sure what you are referring to because I haven't been editing for very long. Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting creating "oldest" lists for any arbitrary region, but only for Blue Zones since there is significant coverage about aging in these regions. So it would be a maximum of five articles. I noticed there's a neutrality hatnote on the Blue Zones article and I was thinking that longevity lists for those regions might assist in resolving the neutrality issue. -- GreenVolvox (talk) 00:20, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
@GreenVolvox: I think you would have trouble establishing notability for lists of oldest people in each "blue zone", but you could possibly gather reliably-sourced information from coverage of said blue zones to make a single longevity list in the article itself. — JFG talk 17:01, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Chinese cases

Anyone here with an understanding of the Chinese language willing to conduct additional research to see if any of these 110+ individuals can be added to the various longevity lists? The oldest, Xu Senzhen (徐素珍), is well over 113, but sadly, this source seems to only report birth years and months, not including days, which isn't enough to add them. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Silas Simmons

There's someone at that article arguing there's no actual dispute over the age of Silas Simmons. Input would be welcome. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion there could use another voice, it is an interesting case. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Proliferation of longevity lists

Does anyone else think List of the last surviving American slaves should be sent to AfD? Not only is the topic obscured by the fact that most black Americans in those days didn't know how old they were and no records were kept, how many fanfluff slices of life on Earth (List of last surviving veterans of military operations, List of long marriages, List of oldest living state leaders, List of surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War, List of last survivors of historical events, List of notable surviving veterans of World War II) are we going to allow? The problem is clearly continuing to metastasize. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:24, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

  • It should be noted that the community has already *voted to keep three of the articles you mentioned. Now, you nominated the last surviving vets list, and it was overwhelmingly kept by the community. The community supported keeping List of the oldest living state leaders to the extent that a non-admin closure was warranted. List of notable surviving veterans of World War II was snow kept once and NAC kept another time. Renominating these three feels WP:TENDENTIOUS. List of long marriages is an odd case, with a nebulous close and a weird DELREV. It could probably be renominated, but I'll again be arguing keep. List of surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War is fair game, as it was a no consensus close 2.5 years ago, and List of last survivors of historical events has also never been nominated, so you could if you wanted to. In my view, all the examples you cite meet point 2 of WP:LISTPURP and should be kept on that basis at the very least.
To answer your question in your first sentence, someone might, but I wouldn't, again, per LISTPURP. I would advise that you consult WP:AFRO about deletion, since it's arguably a list that's more about slavery than longevity. schetm (talk) 06:45, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Habib Miyan

See Talk:Habib Miyan#Redirection. Years ago I boldly redirected this article to a targeted section on Longevity myths, someone reverted. Input there would be welcome. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:43, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Any takers? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:53, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Tables in longevity pages don't sort correctly

E.g.: List of the oldest people by country

In addition, people listed on the page above are not the oldest listed in their respective country pages, e.g. Supercentenarians from Portugal (not to mention wp:overlinked countries, deprecated HTML tags and table wp:accessibility noncompliance, i.e. MOS:DTAB). I fixed all that, and fellow editors (‪Bart Versieck[9], TFBCT1[2]) have thanked me for it, but a couple others are adamant about keeping them broken. Any suggestions?

Here are my revisions they reverted:

— Guarapiranga ☎ 22:28, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

If you're fixing them, you're the one who's doing it right. Point them to this discussion if you get further pushback. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:37, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, @The Blade of the Northern Lights. I restored the edits with reference to this discussion, as you recommended, and it's still getting reverted (notably by Chicdat and Newshunter12). I'm still getting positive feedback (thanks) from ‪Bart Versieck, and TFBCT1 is improving on my edits. To be clear, the intentions of my edits were:
  • fix table sorting with {{sortname}} (which also adds hCards)
  • eliminate data inconsistencies with the disp=table option of {{ayd}}
  • make data consistent across articles through labeled section transclusion
  • make tables wp:accessible with plainrowheaders and scope=row tags
  • remove deprecated HTML tags (e.g. align=center, bgcolor, etc)
— Guarapiranga ☎ 02:47, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
@Guarapiranga You got reverted at List of the oldest living people because you added a great deal of needless clutter and complications to the article. Why is an entire country of birth tab needed when in 95% of cases, it's an exact data duplication to what exists now? The existing structure is clean and unobtrusive, unlike the time suck you created. Who also anointed you to suddenly and without any prior discussion, dramatically change the entire suite of longevity articles? Newshunter12 (talk) 02:59, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Who also anointed you to suddenly and without any prior discussion, dramatically change the entire suite of longevity articles?
WP:policy did, Newshunter12. WP:policy states that anyone willing and able to edit Wikipedia articles can and should (even anonymous editors!). It also encourages us all to WP:BE BOLD in our edits, and to discuss them in talk pages (such as this one), if they're not consensual. And to do so after, not "prior", edit and reversion steps (WP:BRD).
Now to answer your main question:
Why is an entire country of birth tab needed when in 95% of cases, it's an exact data duplication to what exists now?
To make tables consistent across articles through transclusion. For that to work, the tables need to have the same columns (see how in List of oldest people by country it is now pulling the top 3 oldest supercentenarians from the US, UK and Portugal, which in the latter case was previously only showing two, the second of which wasn't even in the top 5!). — Guarapiranga ☎ 03:10, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
But I did still notice some citation errors though for your references to the lists of American and English supers, apart from an incorrect date format for the birth and death dates of Charlotte Knauss, as you can see right here below:

United Kingdom (more) Charlotte Hughes[59] F 1 Aug 1877 17 Mar 1993 115 years, 228 days England England Annie Jennings[59] F 12 Nov 1884 20 Nov 1999 115 years, 8 days England England Eva Morris[59] F 8 Nov 1885 2 Nov 2000 114 years, 360 days England England

United States (more) Sarah Knauss[43] F September 24, 1880 December 30, 1999 119 years, 97 days Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Susannah Mushatt Jones[60] F July 6, 1899 May 12, 2016 116 years, 311 days Alabama New York Gertrude Weaver[60] F July 4, 1898 April 6, 2015 116 years, 276 days Arkansas Arkansas Extremely sexy (talk) 03:18, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Guarapiranga For that to work, the tables need to have the same columns (see how in List of oldest people by country it is now pulling the top 3 oldest supercentenarians from the US, UK and Portugal, which in the latter case was previously only showing two, the second of which wasn't even in the top 5! That is because the second entry for Portugal was the country's oldest man, not a failed attempt to have the top two oldest people. Dramatically changing articles, including the scope of nearly every article, such as the above example, should have been done with prior consensus. The same with adding seas of red links and changing the entire coding structure of some articles. The above example shows you do not even understand how these articles worked, yet you waltzed into a topic area you had hitherto contributed nothing to, and took a hatchet to everything in sight (three rounds of mass re-naming the same articles and counting, among so much other damage). Newshunter12 (talk) 03:30, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Ah, now I see the downside of these changes; initially I only saw the ref fixes, not sure why I missed it the first time. Honestly, I don't know enough about tables to say what the best fix is here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:24, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
@Extremely Sexy:
  • The citation errors are easily resolved by making sure the ref name definition is made in the transcluded section, rather than using just the ref name there (I tried explaining that here to Chicdat, apparently to no avail).
  • Date format there for *Sarah Knauss is the one used on the Supercentenarians in the United States page. I'd like it to be the same d mmm yyyy on the whole table, but I can already foresee that being met with (innocuous) resistance too.
— Guarapiranga ☎ 04:36, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
Newshunter12 is correct. Please find consensus before making these changes. And merge the ties, otherwise I will revert again. 🐔 Chicdat  Bawk to me! 10:01, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
The tied ages continue to be merged; I didn't change that. — Guarapiranga ☎ 05:00, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Gustav Gerneth's actual date of death

There's a discussion going on at Talk:List of the oldest people by country concerning this topic. Renewal6 (talk) 11:59, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Longevity/Archive_2&oldid=1086278532"