User:Unschool/The "Recent Death" Tag

When you hear that someone famous has just died, do you immediately pull that person up in Wikipedia and apply this to the article?

Well, I would just like you to take a moment and ask yourself a few questions:

• The tag says that "information may change rapidly" as more becomes known. Do you really think that that's likely in this case? I mean, when a person has died of some terminal illness, or even in a plane crash, how often is it that you've heard of some surprising new development in the "death news" of a celebrity? Pretty rare, isn't it?

• And even if circumstances do change rapidly, just how is your tag going to help with that? Do you expect people will be coming back here—to Wikipedia—for the latest information on how that person died? Okay, let's say that someone does come back here looking for an "update". Just how is the existence of your tag going to help them find this updated information? In fact, just how does having this tag actually improve the quality of this article at all? Is it possible that it actually makes the article worse?

• Consider—this article is a biography—the story of this person's entire life. That little tag you've placed at the top of the article is the single most conspicuous thing that the reader is going to see when they open up this page. But is the person's death—that is, the way that they died—the most important thing about that person? Would the person who is the subject of this article, or would their family members, or their friends, or their fans, want to be remembered ten years from now primarily because of the way that they died? Yes, I know that fans and historians will remember this person's death and the circumstances thereof. But is this person's death the primary cause of their fame? If not, then should their death really be the most prominent thing displayed in the article?

• I imagine you may be thinking, "But this is a recent death. This has to be treated differently because people may not have all the current facts." Well, chances are that the vast majority of people who visit this page today, and perhaps for a month after the person dies, are coming because they've just heard the news that this person has died. Do you actually believe that someone is going to learn of this person's death because they hit the "Random Article" link? And since they do already know that this person has just died, is it not also unnecessary for us to tell them that "details may change" (rapidly or otherwise). If they are smart enough to use a computer, don't you think that they're also smart enough to realize that details may possibly change? Do you believe that, if you don't warn them of this fact, that—what, they're going to write a paper for some class they are taking and provide misinformation?

• And if facts about the dead may change rapidly, do not facts about the living change even more rapidly? Shouldn't we have a tag for the living that looks something like this:

This article is about a currently living person. Some information, such as the circumstances of the person's health, employment, and love life may change rapidly as more facts become known.

• And when you place the recent death tag, do you also set a date for removing it? I would think that there would be an expiration date on recent death tags, but I have removed them when they were over three months old, and I'll bet that if I went back further I'd find more (but maybe not, the tag was only created in February of 2007, if I recall). Anyway, have you considered how long constitutes "recent", and are you going to monitor your tag and make sure that this article does not suffer the irony of actually becoming more out-of-date because you placed a tag on here which then was forgotten? Do you mind if I do you a favor and just take it off for you?