The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

Operator: DannyS712 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 02:09, Sunday, February 24, 2019 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Javascript

Source code available: User:DannyS712 test/dead.js, User:DannyS712 test/isdead.js

Function overview: Replace |living=yes and variations thereof with |living=no on talk pages of pages linked from from Wikipedia:Database reports/Potential biographies of dead people (3).

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): WP:BOTR#Remove living-yes, etc from talkpage of articles listed at Wikipedia:Database reports/Potential biographies of dead people (3)

Edit period(s): Weekly (the pages is updated weekly)

Estimated number of pages affected: Currently the page has 1227 entries, including those that will be skipped; this will likely decrease in future weeks once the bot is running, so maybe ~1000 per week

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: The script will skip pages that are either a: on the list of pages not to edit or b: contain and/& in the title, which suggests that there is more than one person.

Discussion[edit]

• @DH85868993: submitted! --DannyS712 (talk) 02:09, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• I do not think this is a good task for a bot, because there are too many possibilities for false positives, either because of the above-mentioned multiple-person issues and/or vandalism or good-faith BLP violations. For example, Myra Landau was modified here saying she died, but with no references to verify. It has since been added to the table listed above. Is she really dead? Was that drive-by vandalism (which I've seen a lot of on people more famous than her) or mistaken identity? Should she be marked as dead even though there are no references to verify she's dead? Basically, I went down seven pages of the dbase report and half of them are problematic, hence my concern. Primefac (talk) 20:13, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @Primefac: I completely understand your concern, but if people are added to categories XXXX deaths and aren't really dead, then that is a separate issue. I should be able to come up with a way to set them back to alive based on another report (eg if the category is removed) but this task only seeks to eliminate the discrepancy between the article page and the talk page; the article is usually more up-to-date than the talk page. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:20, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not really a separate issue in my mind, since they're two sides of the same coin. This is where more discussion might need to come into play; personally I wouldn't want to be automatically marking potentially living people as dead any more than I'd want to be automatically marking potentially dead people as alive. Primefac (talk) 16:18, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @Primefac: What would be the appropriate venue to have a bigger discussion about doing this? --DannyS712 (talk) 10:59, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd agree, and go further to that "marking potentially living people as dead" is riskier, as while our policy on BLPs extends to the recently deceased it's not a guarantee that they are marked as recently deceased. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:11, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd go with either WT:BLP or WT:VPR (with a cross-post to the other). Primefac (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  @Primefac: I might at some point, but currently I'd like to focus my bot-related time elsewhere. Can I put this "on hold" indefinitely, with the understanding that if I have the time and motivation to revisit it, I can simply reopen the task (i.e. its not "denied"?) Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 19:58, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Withdrawn by operator. No prejudice against re-opening. Primefac (talk) 20:20, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.