This is an explanatory essay about the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy § Recently dead or probably dead. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

This page details the transition of an existing biography of a person who has recently died. Material about recently deceased persons are treated the same way as living persons; they must be written from the neutral point of view, citing verifiable sources that are not original research.

Wikipedia is not a memorial site; articles are not a place to memorialize any deceased persons.

• Find/discover a reliable source. You might come across a news article announcing the death of someone notable enough to already have an article about them on Wikipedia. If you know that person personally, and receive the news early, do not update the article, because it is not only original research (no reliable, published sources exist yet) but also conflict of interest editing, depending on how close your relationship is with the person.
• Add their death date in the infobox and with the source in the lead. In the parentheses within the first sentence, remove the word "born" and append &nbsp;– date of death)<ref>...</ref>. Make sure to use the recommended date formatting if specified in the article.

• Use past tense.

• Write about their death in more detail. Now that the recent changes patrollers see that your material and everything subsequent is indeed true, start writing about their death.

First choose where to put the information. Examples from good to featured articles include: putting it under the "Personal life" or "Biography" section (Cleopatra, Mahatma Ghandi); while others, especially ones about politicians, put it under the "Leadership", "Post-leadership" or "Later years" section (George Washington, Vladimir Lenin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart); if their death is notable enough create an separate section about it (John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., Elizabeth II).^{[balance of gender, philosophy, time period, needed]}

Describe how they died. Provide their medical history if relevant.

• Replace [[Category:Living people]] with [[Category:2024 deaths]]
• Tag the article with ((Recent death)) if "many editors (perhaps dozens or more) are editing the article on the same day."

• Update the WikiProject templates. This includes: ((WikiProject Biography)), living=no; ((WikiProject Anti-war)), blp=no.

• Add their death to time articles. These include Deaths in 2024, September 12, and, if it exists, September 2024.