Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Longevity

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Longevity NA‑class

	This page is within the scope of WikiProject Longevity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the World's oldest people on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LongevityWikipedia:WikiProject LongevityTemplate:WikiProject LongevityLongevity
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Basic issues that this project needs to attempt to resolve

(In the following the term "validated" refers to age determination by organisation such as, but not limited to, the GRG; "verified" means reported by any source which satisfies WP:RS)

The subject of human longevity differs from most other human-related Wiki topics in that it relies on far more subjectivity than objectivity. While many longevity fans treat it is a contest similar to sporting events it is most certainly not. Since its inception on Misplaced Pages longevity has suffered under multiple issues including: WP:V, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:TRIVIA and WP:LISTCRUFT. As such there are multiple issues which need addressing if this Project is to bring the subject to a more acceptable standard for Misplaced Pages purposes.

"Verifiability not truth"

It is, at present, impossible to determine any (exceptionally old) person's age to within 1 day by scientific analysis. Even if there were such a method it would need to be applied to every person on the planet to be able to say with 100% certainty that anyone is/was the world's oldest living/ever person. Therefore any statement to the effect that "This person is the world's oldest living person" is false. The statement needs to be something to the effect that "This person is the oldest known person whose age has been determined by documentary evidence". That still leaves the issue of who determines this, especially for living people. The RFCs here and here determined that there be no differentiation between Reliable Sources, more specifically that there be no differentiation between persons validated by the GRG and others cited in Reliable Sources. This initially applied specifically only to that article (with some later clarification) but has since been applied to some, but not all, similar lists in various country/region articles.

Should there be no differentiation between Reliable Sources across all Longevity-related articles?
With reference to deceased persons, should there be an upper limit of credibility, if so what should that limit be?
With reference to living persons, should there be an upper limit of credibility, if so what should that limit be?

I believe there should be no differentiation between Reliable Sources across all Longevity-related articles, except when it comes to determining the worlds oldest person/man, as long as what constitutes a reliable source is tightly controlled. With reference to deceased and living persons, I believe there should be an upper limit for inclusion of age 114 for all claims that do not have backing by an international body, such as Guinness or the GRG. At age 115+ random birthday media coverage just doesn't cut it as a reliable source for a persons age. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:10, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

The World's Oldest Ever person

There is common agreement that Jeanne Calment is the oldest known person whose age has been validated.

Should Jeanne Calment continue to be the upper limit of oldest known verified people, or should there be a higher limit (or none) and all cases that pass RS be treated equally?

Yes, Jeanne Calment should continue to be the upper limit of oldest known validated women and Jiroemon Kimura should be the upper limit of oldest known validated men (unless a future internationally validated person surpasses them). Newshunter12 (talk) 08:21, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Agreed. CommanderLinx (talk) 04:35, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
Agreed Legacypac (talk) 05:05, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely, that's a reasonable standard to weed out most unlikely longevity claims. — JFG 09:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The World's Oldest Living Person

The Afds here and here glossed over an important point; who determines the WOP (and World's Oldest Man if different)? This has, since, 1955, been determined by announcements by Guinness (and the ceremonial presentation of certificates where possible). This process has been muddied somewhat by Guinness using the GRG for its age validations since (? approx 2000). The result has been that when the WOP dies news outlets report the next WOP as whoever is next on the GRG's published list. It has also been the habit of longevity-fan Wiki editors to proclaim the next WOP before/without the existence of any RS report, thus violating BLP. A further issue is that the GRG is not as reliable, and certainly not as infallible, as many of its supporters like to think. There are numerous cases of validation being withdrawn, at least one long-standing questionable case being reclassified as validated (and not questioned), a case where another case was found to be older than the announced WOP, and a case where the GRG insisted a person had died when there relative insisted on Misplaced Pages that they were still alive. With the death of its founder the GRG appears to be operating on a reduced budget (they only list new people once they are past their 112th birthday, not their 110th) and this may be part of the recent problems. I for one feel that this impacts significantly on the reliability of the GRG v other RS on this issue in particular.

Who (i.e. which RS) determines the World's Oldest Person?
What should the upper limit be (if any) for credible WOP claims (i.e. if the Guinness WOP is not be given preferential status over other RS)?

Since they have used the GRG for many years and with the GRG's declining reliability as a source, it's not perfect, but Guinness should still be the definitive word on who the World's Oldest Person and World's Oldest Man are. While many in the media and longevity fans just look at who is the new person at the top of the GRG's list to decide these titles, Guinness takes its time to make these determinations. As of April 10th, Guinness has not announced a new WOP since Violet Brown died in September 2017. Clearly, they don't just take who makes the GRG's list at face value. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:51, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Biographies

The Afds for Chiyo Miyako and Kane Tanaka highlight a long-standing issue with longevity biographies. In the past many longevity fans created articles for many supercentenarians on the flimsiest basis. Many have since been deleted on the basis of failing WP:GNG, and a few redirected/merged to country list articles as mini-bios. The arguments for Miyako and Tanaka fell largely into the following camps:

"The world's oldest person is clearly notable and there is no question that an article is justified (irrelevant of content)."

"The world's oldest person is clearly notable and there is enough content to justify an article."

"The world's oldest person is notable but there is not enough content to justify a stand-alone article, however a redirect and merge to a mini-bio in List of Japanese supercentenarians is justified."

"Insufficient content in the current article to justify its retention or even reconstitute as a mini-bio in List of Japanese supercentenarians, a simple redirect will suffice."

It is unfortunate that in both the Miyako and Tanaka cases that the original Afd result to delete (or merge/redirect) was challenged and 1 (so far) overturned to "No consensus" (and the article restored). This indicates that determining a notability guidelines for biographies will be more difficult, even a consensus here may not be accepted by the wider Wiki community. If there is a clear consensus on 3 above then it may be possible to get something included in WP:BIO.

Is there any minimum criteria that could/should be used in determining whether a longevity related biography is automatically notable (e.g. Guinness's WOP)?
Is there any minimum criteria that could/should be used in determining whether a longevity related mini-biography in a Country List (e.g. List of Japanese supercentenarians#People is automatically notable (e.g. Guinness's WOP)?

I believe that the minimum criteria used in determining whether a longevity related biography is automatically notable should be whether that individual is currently in the top 5 oldest people/men ever and if their is sufficient truly encyclopedic information to include in such an article, beyond table info. I believe that the minimum criteria used in determining whether a longevity related mini-biography in a country list is automatically notable should be is that person currently one of the five oldest people/the oldest man from that country, did they live to an exceptional age (say 115+) and is there sufficient encyclopedic information to include in such a mini-bio, beyond table info. Newshunter12 (talk) 09:32, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

I like this idea^. The article on Lucy Hannah is going to be an issue. She's top 4 oldest of all time and lived to 117, but her article tells us absolutely nothing about her. CommanderLinx (talk) 10:47, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

A good majority of the WP:PERMASTUBs were deleted/redirected back in 2015, but there's still a few out there. If all we can say about someone is the absolute basic life details of name, born, married, worked and died then we don't need an article and they can easily be handled on a list. Pretty much any permastub that repeats table info should be redirected to their appropriate list. A few of the mini-bios need clearing out (Look at the top two names here for example) if they restate table info. CommanderLinx (talk) 10:47, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Listcruft

Despite the fact that many have been removed there are still considerable number of "List of supercentenarian" articles, and lists within other articles which are of dubious encyclopedic merit. Many of these would appear to fail WP:LISTCRITERIA, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH etc. If it is taken into account that most lists are based on lists by the GRG, and given that the GRG is neither an exhaustive list of such people or the only RS for the same and that many lists are unlikely to be of interest to anyone but longevity fans which, if any, should be retained.

Are any lists by area (i.e. continent) notable (with the possible/probable exception of List of European supercentenarians)?
Should there be a criteria for which country lists of surpercentenarians (e.g. minimum/maximum numbers, coverage, upper age limit)?
Which RS should be used for such lists?
Are "chronological list of oldest person" type lists justifiable (since most are OR)?

The only list by area that is notable and should be kept is the List of European supercentenarians. The others primarily just duplicate non-notable individuals from other lists. Criteria for which country lists of supercentenarians exist or how they operate should be a minimum of 15 individuals and a maximum of 30 per country, a minimum age of 113 (since there have been countless thousands of supercentenarians - just being one is not notable), no lists of emigrants from a country, and a Jeanne Calment/Jiroemon Kimura standard upper age limit. All RS should be equal on country lists, with no preference given to GRG validated people. Chronological list of oldest person type lists are not justifiable since they are primarily OR and give the very harmful to this project impression that longevity is some kind of contest or office that is held.

It can't be overstated how many problems in the existing project could be reduced or eliminated by eliminating listcruft. Newshunter12 (talk) 10:08, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Agreed with above. All continent articles (bar Europe) either all fail WP:LISTN as no sources discuss those particular tables or they duplicate already existing information better handled in other lists. Not even the GRG seem to be interested in supercentenarians by continent as nowhere on their site do they have supercentenarians from Africa, South America, Asia, etc. The only references for the Africa list for example are GRG tables such as "supercentenarians who died in 20XX" and "supercentenarians from <COUNTRY>", nothing about continents. If no sources isn't enough, they're also totally redundant. Just look at the Asian one before I restored the redirect. It had a total of THREE names out of fifty (one of the immigrants is from Japan) that weren't already on the Japanese list. Oceania has 6 out of 43 names that aren't on the Australian list. Most of the African ones are on the French list. And apparently Africa and South America have no living supercentenarians.

Happy supporting the removal the chronological list sections too. Like above, most of the references are from the GRG tables such as the "supercentenarians from <country>" tables which (fun fact) have not been updated in over ten years. The best one being the Japan one which is from 2001... CommanderLinx (talk) 04:31, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

@CommanderLinx, @The Blade of the Northern Lights, @DerbyCountyinNZ I recently nominated the Africa article for deletion and all the continent level lists were merged into one grand list; in theory it should be easier to get rid of them in one fell swoop now if someone wants to AfD it, but I fear a keepist swarm would try to muck it up like other recent AfD's. Precedent that this crap article passes policy would be bad. Only the European section doesn't utterly fail WP:LISTN (not to mention the redundancy issues all the lists have) and that passable section of content shouldn't protect all the continent level lists. Do any of you believe that the grand list should face AfD? Newshunter12 (talk) 08:22, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree the continent articles should be deleted. The group merge only confirms WP:LISTN as there is a massive lack of sources. The only source being GRG tables that don't actually mention continents on their site. If LISTN isn't enough they're all redundant and duplicate other lists (Especially Asia and Oceania). I don't mind either way what happens with a Europe list. I think it is notable but it is also redundant given that every name comes from the country lists. CommanderLinx (talk) 10:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Already said this down below, but for discussion continuity: I just deleted all five country specific Chronological list of oldest person sections because they were each a WP:INDISCRIMINATE WP:SYNTHESIS of original research. Hopefully there won't be a revert battle over them since they do not pass policy despite being on these pages for ages. The five countries were: America, UK, Japan, Italy, and France. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:14, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

A suggestion to spur things on

To start with a realistic goal, what does anyone think of going through the names at List of the verified oldest people and determining if there are any articles worth deleting/merging? One of the perpetual problems is the number of minimally informative stubs, and that list certainly contains its share. We can compile a list of possible candidates here, then go from there. Thoughts? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:21, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. And my apologies for not pushing ahead with this, have had an unexpected move and a change of job so not enough time to give this the attention it needs atm. Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ 22:37, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

No worries, I've had my own issues that kept me less active than anticipated. Any help anyone can give would be greatly appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:00, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Here are some page suggestions to delete: Christina Cock, Adelina Domingues, Eunice Sanborn, Mathew Beard, Ethel Lang (supercentenarian), Neva Morris, Eugénie Blanchard, Delphine Gibson, Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan, Goldie Steinberg, Mary Josephine Ray, and Lucy Hannah. I didn't go through the top 50 on the list, except Lucy Hannah. These articles are stuffed full of the usual longevity trivia and boasts about various age records, and some have even been deleted before. Most are from the era of mass old people article creation and fluff up the articles with pointless stuff like was second oldest this until this other persons validation was withdrawn, now was oldest this! It's interesting to point out that the GRG's Robert Young publicly claims on the 110 club website that Lucy Hannah actually died in her 90's and yet the GRG he heads still marks her claim as validated. The GRG is such a reliable source. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:47, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

This is going to be a mess but I'll add a few more I've been meaning to nominate: Alice Stevenson, Marie Brémont, Germaine Haye (unless notability as a poet can be demonstrated), Marie-Thérèse Bardet, Marcelle Narbonne, Jane Gray (supercentenarian), Annie Jennings, Eva Morris, John Evans (supercentenarian), Ada Roe, Aida Mason and John Mosely Turner. There's a few more on List of British supercentenarians (and probably the other country pages) that need to be merged/redirected to lists but I think I've added enough. There's HEAPS of these WP:PERMASTUBs still around :-(. We can also have a much clearer discussion on most of the previously nominated ones as most of the 110 club sockpuppets have been cleared out. CommanderLinx (talk) 10:59, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I'll nominate Annie Jennings now, as that seems like one of the most obvious ones, and see how that goes. Depending on the outcome, it may be possible to bundle some of these into groups. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:36, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

There's also newly created Linda Wiggins and Maudie Wilson. DerbyCountyinNZ 04:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

I just nominated Adelina Domingues as a control group of sorts, to see how your AfD fairs compared to a more strictly policy focused nomination launched the same day. It will help us decide how to proceed with the rest. Newshunter12 (talk) 09:35, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I feel like there is some funny business going on at the Adelina Domingues AfD. One of the Keep voters hasn't edited in nearly two years and suddenly today they start voting in AfD's and posted blatantly garbage articles as evidence of passing WP:N. They also linked to a paywalled "scholarly publication" Robert Young was an author of and a publication you have to be a student at Virginia Tech to access. I know from scouring old longevity AfD's in the past there have been accusations that the GRG funnels lists of sources (often they or GRG members were authors or quoted) to people off-wiki to then use on Misplaced Pages as proof of notability. Both keep voters keep talking about the vaguer WP:N and not WP:GNG as is typical in these AfD's, which just seems off. Both keep talking up garbage sources and proclaiming this crap article vaults over the notability threshold. This thread and therefore our plans for major cuts are public for any one to see and try to stop... I'm not accusing any editor of wrongdoing, but something just feels amiss even if I don't have a smoking gun to prove it. Any thoughts? Upon double checking, the AfD 10 years ago for this very person had an accusation of a list of crap sources being sent to someone, although in that particular case the GRG wasn't openly accused of being the sender. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:21, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

That editor seems to have a history of extended breaks and isn't one of the GRG lackeys, and both editors probably just don't have a firm grasp of our notability policy or the way sourcing works in this topic area. If the GRG people (or a couple others who aren't GRG people but unabashed longevity/Robert Young fanboys) show up they'll probably start parroting those arguments, but I don't think these two editors themselves are suspicious. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:58, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I've also nominated Goldie Steinberg to see how that goes. This is explicitly not an effort to canvas (I haven't linked to them just in case that'd look bad), only to keep track of the AfDs so we can measure outcomes and accordingly figure what to do next. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:48, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Annie Jennings was deleted, Adelina Domingues relisted for further discussion. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:13, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

FWIW I just nominated Eugénie Blanchard, Delphine Gibson, Marie-Thérèse Bardet and Maudie Wilson for deletion, with a short and clear rationale. Let's see how that goes. — JFG 00:16, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Of interest for reference, here is an AfD that got unanimous delete/redirect opinions, from a simple "not notable beyond longevity" argument: Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Marie-Simone Capony. — JFG 00:29, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

I just nominated Mary Josephine Ray and yesterday I PRODded Neva Morris. So far the AfDs have had almost no disruption, one stray SPA at Eugénie Blanchard but nothing else; regardless of the outcomes, to this point this is dramatically better than any previous efforts at improving this topic area. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:03, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I just nominated Lucy Hannah, which is now at AfD for the fourth time. We have been having better luck with the simpler nomination reasonings, but I figured it would be better to be more policy oriented when nominating this doozy. Does anyone think it would be advantageous for me to add the following as a comment to this AfD: While the 110 club is not considered a reliable source since it is a forum, I think it is worthwhile to mention that the co-author of one of the cited books, the head of the GRG (another source used in the article), and an affiliate of GWR (the third source in the article) Robert Young, publicly claimed on that website using his official account that Lucy Hannah actually died in her 90's, not at 117. If true, this would explain the complete lack of contemporaneous media coverage of Hannah's supposed age records and why so little is known about her in general. Newshunter12 (talk) 01:33, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

You should save this argument in case somebody touts her exceptional age in favor of her notability. Otherwise, better not stir the AfD pot. However, this information should be mentioned in whatever list contains her name and purported age, at least as a footnote. — JFG 03:10, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

I just used this argument as you recommended, but I have been a stickler for using only reliable sources in actual articles, so I will leave adding a footnote to her list entries to someone else so as to avoid a guaranteed controversy. Newshunter12 (talk) 22:32, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I just nominated Linda Wiggins and Christina Cock. Once the first batch of discussions all finish running their course, it'd be good to get a table of outcomes together (I can pull together the articles, but I'm awful with table formatting so I'll leave that to someone better at such things). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:01, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Your wish is my command: #AfDs of individual biographies — JFG 12:27, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! In a little bit I'll add Edna Parker as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Sadly, Adelina Domingues survived AfD as no consensus thanks to it being left open for several extra days, including multiple days as the only open AfD for Oct 20, which allowed last minute keep voters to show up and essentially proclaim ever being the worlds oldest person is an automatic grant of notability. It was enough to muddy the waters. Newshunter12 (talk) 02:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Although I supported deletion for lack of substance, I think keeping Domingues is a justifiable outcome, because of the broad coverage she received as the world's oldest recognized person and because of her ethnicity. Nobody would suggest removing the article on Jeanne Calment either, despite her fame being only related to her record-setting age. The articles that deserve the axe, in my opinion, are those about people who happened to be the "oldest in country X" for a period of a few months until their "successor" took over the "title". That's WP:Fancruft / WP:Indiscriminate territory, and must go. — JFG 11:17, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

And it can be revisited after some time, once we get a better sense of what's being kept versus deleted. Agree that it was open for way too long, though, that was odd. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 12:06, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

AfDs of individual biographies

Following the discussion above, here is a list of articles about supercentenarian subjects lacking independent notability beyond their age. Barring article improvement, most of them should be deleted or redirected to the appropriate lists.

Name	Country + list	Lifespan	AfD date + link	Outcome
Annie Jennings	United Kingdom	1884–1999	12 October 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Adelina Domingues	Cape Verde / USA	1888–2002	12 October 2018 (2nd)	Y No Consensus
Goldie Steinberg	Moldova / USA	1900–2015	15 October 2018 (2nd)	N Redirected
Maudie Wilson	New Zealand	1903–2013	21 October 2018	N Deleted
Eugénie Blanchard	France	1896–2010	21 October 2018	N Redirected
Marie-Thérèse Bardet	France	1898–2012	21 October 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Delphine Gibson	United States	1903–2018	21 October 2018	N Deleted
Mary Josephine Ray	Canada / USA	1895–2010	24 October 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Neva Morris	United States	1895–2010	~~24 October 2018 (PROD)~~ AfD started 30 October 2018	N Deleted and redirected
Lucy Hannah	United States	1875–1993	25 October 2018 (4th!)	N Redirected
Aida Mason	United Kingdom	1895–2007	~~25 October 2018 (PROD)~~ AfD started 31 October 2018	N Deleted
Linda Wiggins	New Zealand	1908–living	28 October 2018	N Deleted and redirected
Christina Cock	Australia / women	1887–2002	28 October 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Ada Roe	United Kingdom	1858–1970	28 October 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Edna Parker	United States	1893–2008	No consensus in 2006 29 October 2018 (2nd)	Y Kept after substantial source improvement
Marcelle Narbonne	France	1898–2012	29 October 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Marie Brémont	France	1886–2001	30 October 2018 (BOLD)	Merged (diff), then restored (diff). Discussion opened. N Redirected, including picture.
Germaine Haye	France	1888–2002	30 October 2018 (BOLD)	Merged
Margaret Fish	United Kingdom	1899–2011	30 October 2018	N Redirected
Elsie Steele	United Kingdom	1899–2010	30 October 2018	N Redirected
Annie Turnbull	United Kingdom	1898–2010	30 October 2018	N Redirected
Eunice Bowman	United Kingdom	1898–2010	30 October 2018	N Deleted
Florrie Baldwin	United Kingdom	1896–2010	30 October 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Annie Knight	United Kingdom	1895–2006	30 October 2018	N Redirected
Emmeline Brice	United Kingdom	1895–2006	30 October 2018	N Deleted
Lucy d'Abreu	United Kingdom	1892–2005	30 October 2018 (2nd)	N Redirected
Eva Morris	United Kingdom	1885–2000	30 October 2018 (2nd)	N Redirected
Violet Wood	United Kingdom	1899–2012	30 October 2018	N Redirected
Grace Jones	United Kingdom	1899–2013	30 October 2018	N Deleted
Gladys Hooper	United Kingdom	1903–2016	30 October 2018	N Redirected
Alice Stevenson	United Kingdom	1861–1973	No consensus in 2015 (2nd) 30 October 2018 (3rd)	N Deleted
Jane Gray	UK / Australia	1901–2014	30 October 2018	N Redirected
John Mosely Turner	United Kingdom	1856–1968	Deleted in 2005 Re-created in 2006 12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Mathew Beard	United States	1870–1985	Deleted in 2007 Re-created in 2012 3 November 2018 (2nd)	N Redirected
Ethel Lang	United Kingdom	1900–2015	Kept in 2015 12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan	Puerto Rico	1889–2004	No consensus in 2015 31 October 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Eunice Sanborn	United States	1896–2011	No consensus in 2015 (2nd) 4 November 2018 (3rd)	N Deleted
Margaret Skeete	United States	1878–1994	Kept in 2010 1 November 2018 (2nd)	N Redirected
Chiyono Hasegawa	Japan	1896–2011	4 November 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Tomoji Tanabe	Japan	1895–2009	5 November 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Yasutaro Koide	Japan	1903–2016	5 November 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Merle Barwis	Canada	1900–2014	6 November 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Cora Hansen	Canada	1899–2012	6 November 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Julie Winnefred Bertrand	Canada	1891–2007	6 November 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
John Evans	United Kingdom	1877–1990	7 November 2018	N Deleted, then redirected to oldest men list
Betsy Baker	United Kingdom	1842–1955	7 November 2018 (BOLD)	Merged
Antonia Gerena Rivera	United States	1900–2015	Kept in 2015 (2nd) 7 November 2018 (3rd)	N Deleted, then redirected
Tane Ikai	Japan	1879–1995	Redirected on 8 November 2018 (reverted) AfD on 12 November (3rd)	N Deleted and redirected
Misao Okawa	Japan	1898–2015	Redirected on 8 November 2018 (reverted) AfD on 12 November (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Kama Chinen	Japan	1895–2010	Redirected on 8 November 2018 (reverted) AfD on 12 November (3rd)	N Deleted and redirected
Dina Manfredini	Italy / USA	1897–2015	10 November 2018	N Deleted, then redirected
Olive Evelyn Boar	United Kingdom	1904–2018	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Rezső Gallai	Hungary	1904–2014	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Katarina Marinič	Slovenia	1899–2010	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Rosa Rein	Switzerland	1897–2010	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Ernest Pusey	USA (off list) / men	1895–2006	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Jokichi Ikarashi	Japan / men	1902–2015	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Anna Stoehr	United States	1900–2014	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Bertha Fry	United States	1893–2007	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Chiyo Miyako	Japan	1901–2018	Deleted on 4 August, then recreated. New AfD on 12 November (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Maude Farris-Luse	United States	1887–2002	12 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Maggie Renfro	United States	1895–2010	12 November 2018	N Deleted, then redirected
Christina Karnebeek-Backs	Netherlands	1849–1959	13 November 2018	N Deleted and redirected
Corinne Dixon Taylor	United States	1893–2007	14 November 2018	N Redirected
Ella Schuler	United States	1897–2011	14 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
John Ingram McMorran	United States	1889–2003	16 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Bernice Madigan	United States	1899–2015	16 November 2018 (2nd)	In progress
Miriam Schmierer	Australia	1899–2011	~~17 November 2018 (PROD)~~ AfD on 19 November	In progress
E. Beatrice Riley	Australia	1896–2009	17 November 2018	N Deleted
Myra Nicholson	Australia	1894–2007	18 November 2018	N Deleted
Vi Robbins	Australia	1902–2014	18 November 2018	N Deleted
Goldie Michelson	Ukraine / USA	1902–2016	19 November 2018	N Deleted
Fanny Godin	Belgium	1902–2014	19 November 2018	N Redirected
Johanna Klink	Germany	1903–2015	19 November 2018	N Redirected
Charlotte Klamroth	Germany	1903–2015	19 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Maria Redaelli	Italy	1899–2013	20 November 2018 (NOPAGE) Procedural AfD on 27 November	N Deleted and redirected
Carl Berner	Germany / USA / men	1902–2013	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted
Jack Lockett	Australia / men	1891–2002	20 November	Y Kept after substantial source improvement
Aarne Arvonen	Finland / men	1897–2009	20 November	In progress
Arturo Licata	Italy / men	1902–2014	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted
Joan Riudavets	Spain / men	1889–2004	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Salustiano Sanchez	Spain / men	1901–2013	20 November	N Deleted and redirected
James Sisnett	Barbados / men	1900–2013	20 November	N Deleted
Fred Hale	USA / men	1890–2004	20 November	N Deleted
Yukichi Chuganji	Japan / men	1889–2003	20 November (4th)	N Deleted and redirected
Sakari Momoi	Japan (off list) / men	1903–2015	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Sadayoshi Tanabe	Japan (off list) / men	1888–2000	20 November (2nd)	N Redirected
Father Akaki (Andrei Kuznetsov)	Finland	1873–1994	20 November 2018 (NOPAGE)	N Redirected
Stanley Lucas	United Kingdom (off the list, too young!)	1900–2010	20 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Yone Minagawa	Japan / women	1893–2007	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted
Maria de Jesus	Portugal / women	1893–2009	20 November	N Deleted
Soledad Mexia	Mexico / USA / women	1899–2013	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted
Dominga Velasco	Mexico / USA / women	1901–2015	20 November (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Edelgard Huber von Gersdorff	Germany	1905–2018	20 November 2018	In progress
Gertrude Weaver	United States	1898–2015	21 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Susie Gibson	United States	1890–2006	No consensus in 2016 21 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted
Marie-Louise Meilleur	Canada	1880–1998	Merged 21 November (BOLD) Restored 5 December	Merged, then restored
Evelyn Kozak	United States	1899–2013	Kept in 2013 22 November 2018	N Deleted
Gertrude Baines	USA / oldest	1894–2009	25 November 2018 (2nd)	N Deleted, then redirected
Maria Gomes Valentim	Brazil	1896–2011	27 November 2018	N Deleted
Kamato Hongo	Japan / debunked	1891–2003	27 November	N Deleted
Nabi Tajima	Japan	1900–2018	27 November (2nd)	N Deleted and redirected
Sarah Knauss	United States	1880–1999	27 November (3rd)	Y No Consensus
Reg Dean	United Kingdom (off the list, too young!)	1902–2013	28 November	In progress
Ralph Tarrant	United Kingdom (off the list, too young!)	1903–2013	28 November	In progress
Frederick Butterfield	United Kingdom (off the list, too young!)	1864–1974	28 November (3rd)	In progress
Ethel Wood	UK / Guernsey (currently 100th on list, soon too young!)	1901–2011	28 November	In progress
Carrie C. White	United States / debunked	1888–1991	28 November	In progress
Hannah Smith (supercentenarian)	United Kingdom (off the list, too young!)	1856–1966	29 November	N Deleted
Susie Brunson	USA / unverified	18??–1994	29 November 2018 (PROD)	In progress
Elias Wen	China / USA / men (too young for both lists!)	1896–2007	29 November 2018	In progress
Lillian Cox	United States (off the list, too young!)	1907–2018	30 November 2018	In progress
Sum Ying Fung	China / Canada (Not on Canadian list for some reason)	1899–2011	No consensus in 2015 30 November 2018	In progress
Charlotte Hughes (supercentenarian)	United Kingdom	1887–1993	1 December 2018	In progress
Felix Simoneaux Jr.	USA / men (too young for both lists!)	1905–2016	1 December 2018 (PROD)	In progress
Nicholas Kao Se Tseien	China	1906–2017	Kept in 2016 2 December 2018	In progress
Fadilah Noor Abbe	Indonesia / Singapore	1896/7(?)–2012	2 December 2018	In progress
Zeenat Bi	India	????	3 December 2018	In progress
Huang Mulan	China	1906–2007	Kept in August 2018 3 December 2018	In progress
Elza Brandeisz	Hungary	1907–2018	3 December 2018	In progress
Helvi Mpingana Kondombolo	Namibia	1898–2008	3 December 2018 (BOLD)	N Redirected
Habib Miyan	India	????–2008	4 December 2018 (2nd(!))	In progress
Sarhat Rashidova	Azerbaijan	1875?–2007	4 December 2018	In progress
José Coelho de Souza	Brazil	1884?–2017	4 December 2018	In progress
Benedykta Mackieło	Lithuania / Poland	1893–2007	4 December 2018 (2nd(!))	In progress
María Díaz Cortés	Spain	1892?–2009	Kept in 2015 (!), 4 December 2018	In progress
Sek Yi	Cambodia	1881?–2003	5 December 2018 (PROD)	In progress
Józef Piotrowski (organist)	Poland	1887?–2005	5 December 2018	In progress

Note on redirects

When replacing an article by a redirect, please add the relevant rcat templates, such as {{R to list}}, and when applicable {{R to section}}. Also, for people who were for some time the oldest in country X, it may be appropriate to keep their categories on the redirect page, so they will still appear in relevant classifications. See for example the French Marcelle Narbonne (just to list) and Marie Brémont when she was redirected (list + mini-bio section). — JFG 13:31, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I have taken the practice of keeping only categories that pertain to the person's birth and death dates, and being a supercentenarian of a particular nationality. Further opinions welcome. — JFG 12:43, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Shout-out

JFG sure deserves a shout-out for his hard work on this whole cleanup effort. Here it is: HEY, JFG! YOU'RE DOING GREAT WORK ON THIS WHOLE CLEANUP EFFORT!. E Eng 22:36, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

And you caught me while online, editing another minefield. I suspect that Mr. Sacher-Masoch has squeezed himself among my ancestors. Ouch! — JFG 22:39, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Longevity navbox

I have done some work on the {{Longevity}} navbox, notably re-organized haphazard "see also" articles by subject matter, and simplified lists of record-holders (supercentenarians, war veterans, etc.) More eyes and comments welcome. — JFG 11:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Notability criteria?

What are the notability criteria for this project?

Specifically, the British supercentenarian articles are each being AfDed at present, on the basis that age does not confer notability (of course, US articles are untouched). If this is the case, then should this whole project be abandoned? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:42, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

The US articles will be up next, there's no bias in that respect. Goodness knows there are enough of those which need to be cleared out. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:44, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

So, what are the notability criteria for any of them? There can be no progress without knowing that. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:08, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

To be brief, for those who aren't/weren't notable already (c.f. Leila Denmark) it's detailed coverage of the person's life from multiple reliable sources. For instance, Emiliano Mercado del Toro is notable because he was not only a supercentenarian, people actually took an interest in him and his life and extensively documented it in multiple places. Same with Claude Choules, a lot of sources took an interest in him because he was the last surviving WWI combat veteran. The key point is that people documented their actual lives in detail beyond routine obituaries or local press coverage, and therefore leave us with more than simple rote statistics suitable for a table. (And to preempt this, the typical comparison, athletics, is highly inapt; unlike a professional sports league, there is no organization or tournament with the winner being whoever manages to fight off the Angel of Death the longest.) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:24, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I concur. We should abide by WP:ANYBIO notability guidelines. Merely getting very old, and being noted in "records" for that fact, does not constitute general notability of a person's life. Besides, there may be a WP:BLP angle whereas these people and their relatives may not be thrilled with the publicity and "eternity" conferred on them by a Misplaced Pages article. To Andy Dingley's point, I believe we should draft a set of notability criteria as part of this rejuvenated WP:LONGEVITY project, and get consensus on them. The outcomes of the recent wave of AfDs will help cement that consensus. — JFG 11:49, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

The Blade of the Northern Lights, I find it very strange that you say that the notability criteria for supercentenarians are "detailed coverage of the person's life from multiple reliable sources." You said in the AfD for Chiyo Miyako "part of the idea of these AfDs is trying to figure out what the criteria are". The point I was trying to make in that AfD was that it is not possible to do enough research on each individual when AfDs of supercentenarians are being posted at the rate of 16 a day! You (and other "delete" voters) seem more interested in getting rid of these articles than in actually trying to consider criteria for notability, or whether individuals meet them. The comment by the closer there was that, with one exception, 'the "keep" opinions amount to "notable because the oldest".' It seems to me that invariably, the "delete" opinions amount to "not notable because the oldest". I do not see any evidence of WP:BEFORE research from the nominators or the (same every time) delete voters, who comment just on the quality of the article and the sourcing in it. That is not how AfD discussions are meant to be! Also, I fail to see how articles about supercentenarians can be "overt self-promotion" - the subjects are all dead! And they did not write about themselves, others wrote about them. I will probably give up on trying to consider AfDs for supercentenarians, as the rate at which they are being posted makes it impossible to do other than a knee-jerk vote. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:09, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@RebeccaGreen: Thanks for your comments. As I have nominated many articles for deletion, I would like to address your concerns. Most of the articles affected were WP:PERMASTUBs, i.e. had no chance of being expanded, simply because after a person reaches "oldest in place X" status, coverage of their life dwindles to a halt, as there is usually nothing of note to document besides celebrating their advanced age. A large part of article contents was dedicated to trivia about various "longevity records" and their recordholders; for example one person was listed as notable because her two sisters also lived past 100, so that their "combined age" was over 300 years. Becoming the "oldest person in place X between dates A and B" is purely a chance event, which is adequately covered by our various tables of oldest people by country and globally. I am totally in favor of keeping articles which have some substance about a person's life and deeds; we have for example well-sourced articles about Henry Allingham, Margaret Ann Neve and Shivakumara Swami. For some people with limited notability that nevertheless goes beyond "was born, worked, married, had children, got very old and died", a mini-bio in the relevant national list is often a good solution, e.g. Camille Loiseau and Venere Pizzinato-Papo. Finally, redirects to lists are useful to inform readers searching for a particular person, and I have added birth, death and "supercentenarian by nationality" categories to such redirects. — JFG 14:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. It does not really address my concerns at all - especially the rate at which the AfDs are being posted. It just confirms me in thinking that there is no point in participating in these AfDs, I may as well put my energies elsewhere and let you just delete all these articles regardless of whether the subjects are notable or not. Most of the "delete" arguments are based on the quality of the existing article and references, and not what sources and information could be added. It does not help that most of the "keep" articles are not based on evidence, but reading the exact same wording for "delete" votes on every AfD does not inspire confidence that any thought has been put into them at all. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, the same wording is used because the same situation arises for so many of those articles. A person reaches an exceptionally old age, she gets noticed by local newspapers, perhaps by longevity trackers, then becomes "oldest in region" or "oldest in country", even sometimes "oldest in the world". This lasts a few days at worst, a few years at best, until her death. A flurry of articles mourn her passing, and then she fades back into obscurity. Wikipedians create an article based on the few sources available, which invariably note the person's "longevity tips", such as eating healthy and believing in God. Well, that's all there is to it, really. Misplaced Pages is not meant as a directory of old people, nor as hagiography of persons who just happened to be alive during some historical events that articles try to connect them to. We do not maintain hundreds of articles about the tallest people, the longest cancer survivors, or the people with most hair. At best, we have lists, and articles about a few especially well-covered cases. That's plenty enough. — JFG 15:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

The rate of them has to do with the enormous number of these pages. The issue dates back to 2006-2007, when the Gerontology Research Group used Misplaced Pages as a dumping ground for their output and vehicle for promoting themselves. This is reflected in the name of the old WikiProject for this subject (see following link), and both the head of the GRG and a very large, vociferous group of his followers obstructed any effort at outside intervention. This resulted in an arbitration case, which the longevity SPAs summarily ignored. Over the last several years they've mostly left or been banned (or both), but there are still a few and their extreme views in the interim irretrievably disrupted a huge number of these discussions. This lead us to where we are today, now that most of the conflict of interest SPAs are gone these needed another round. But before trying to set a specific guideline, I thought starting with the existing general notability guideline and the guidelines on when to write a page versus WP:NOPAGE and trying to work out trends would help; that way it could be descriptive instead of prescriptive, and the latter opens itself up to more noise from the SPAs about "persecution" or such (the rhetoric gets extremely overheated even here, on their off-wiki hangouts it's completely insane). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

American list

I have done some cleanup on the list of American supercentenarians, and renamed it for consistency with other nationalities. Outdated GRG sources from 2007 were replaced with 2015 and 2018 versions. Citations from newspapers were improved; some redundant ones were removed. Lede section was rewritten towards clarity. Hope this helps. — JFG 01:10, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Question: Should we keep the tedious chronology of the oldest American living person since 1955, or can we just point to the global list of same, at the world's oldest people article? This section looks a tad WP:INDISCRIMINATE to me. — JFG 01:10, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

If we even have to have those chronologies at all, keeping them on the global list makes the most sense. Yes, to me it seems impressively indiscriminate (though I think this, from years ago, is hard to top). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:28, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

"Combined age of twins, in days"!? We could make a song out of this… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — JFG 03:49, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

No, we should delete all the country specific chronologies of oldest residents because not only are they WP:INDISCRIMINATE, they are each a WP:SYNTHESIS of original research. Good work on the American page, JFG. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:33, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I just deleted all five country specific Chronological list of oldest person sections because they were each a WP:INDISCRIMINATE WP:SYNTHESIS of original research. Hopefully there won't be a revert battle over them since they do not pass policy despite being on these pages for ages. The five countries were: America, UK, Japan, Italy, and France. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:10, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks; it makes those lists easier to read. — JFG 13:12, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

My edits were reverted on the List of French supercentenarians and List of Japanese supercentenarians articles. Discussions about deleting these sections are ongoing on each of the articles' talk pages if anyone wanted to comment. Newshunter12 (talk) 00:39, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Consistency in redirects and categories

I cleaned up the French list, and created or updated redirects for all people who reached 113 years old. A typical redirect looks like this:

#REDIRECT ]
{{R to list}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vellard, Lydie}}
]
]
]

If the person has a mini-bio in a section of the list, we can use:

#REDIRECT ]
{{rcat shell|
  {{R to list}}
  {{R to section}}
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brémont, Marie}}
]
]
]
]

This way, we get a decently populated category of supercentenarians by country, and search lookup will work consistently for all readers that chanced upon the name of any sort of "oldest person". By current standards of super old age, people over 113 are still counted in dozens, not thousands, so this remains manageable. Most of them were already identified by a redirect or a deleted article. Legacy cases under 113 who already had a redirect are "grandfathered", i.e. added to the relevant categories. Some names have slipped off the list since they were redirected: in that case I list them up for deletion, see Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 November 8. A useful tool to plan the cleanup is the redirect checker, which shows in particular as "broken" the redirects to sections that no longer exist; the fix is to simply redirect to the whole list, while adding appropriate categories if they are missing. Feel free to re-use these techniques on other national lists of supercentenarians. — JFG 11:39, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Lede section prose and citations

I have rewritten the lede sections of the French, Italian and American lists, cutting on trivia, adding some life anecdotes, updating citations, and placing the portrait of a featured supercentenarian when there was none. These pages now feel a little more like an encyclopedia than a database, although there is certainly much more we can do. Comments welcome. — JFG 13:17, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Re-wrote the Japanese lede section too. — JFG 14:28, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Those look much better, yes. Thank you for your work on this! The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:08, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

My edits to the Japanese article were reverted. You may want to comment at Talk:List of Japanese supercentenarians#Lede section rewrite. — JFG 20:10, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

No surprise that the reverts were done by the last active member of the GRG fanclub. DerbyCountyinNZ 21:56, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

If it comes to that, I'll get an RFC together to definitively keep this nonsense out of these articles and to support your versions. We could manage all of them in one RfC, that won't be an issue. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:12, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Those are two distinct issues. An RfC could indeed address in one shot all sections listing the "oldest in country X" people over time, and establish whether we should keep or remove them. Changes to the lede sections should in my opinion be discussed on each article. So far, it is being contested only on the Japanese page, but with no reason provided besides "I only have a problem with the changes in the lede".. This needs to be resolved by regular debate; please chime in. — JFG 05:52, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Done. Objections to the new Japanese lede have been heard and resolved. — JFG 06:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Today I improved the lede sections of the German and Dutch lists. Note that the Dutch list is at AfD with a suggested merge to the European list: I first supported merging, but then switched to Keep after working on the article for a while, especially to improve sourcing. Only one Dutch person is currently mentioned on the European list, so there is very little overlap. Further comments welcome, as usual. — JFG 17:37, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Tane Ikai and Misao Okawa

Both of those merge and redirects were reverted. A couple months ago, the article on Tane Ikai (as well as Chiyo Miyako) were the subject of canvassed AfDs and canvassed, blatantly tendentious DRVs. Any discussion of Ikai or Miyako (though a discussion on Okawa should go smoother) is likely to attract some attention, but hopefully not the same kind as the most recent prior discussions. Just a note for those unfamiliar with the history there, those are among the few with very recent SPA tendentiousness. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:15, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I got Ikai mixed up with Nabi Tajima, but the Ikai discussion had serious SPA issues as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:48, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Sent three reverted Japanese redirects to AfD. — JFG 09:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Excellent, and I agree with all of those. The other one will be Kane Tanaka. I feel like it'll be a bigger fight if I nominate it, due to my involvement in that train wreck, but I'd support anyone else's nomination. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:37, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Merging list of oldest men and women

Given the strong overlap between those lists, I have suggested a three-way merge of List of the verified oldest men and List of the verified oldest women into List of the verified oldest people. Interested editors are invited to comment at Talk:List of the verified oldest people#Merge lists of men and women. — JFG 06:30, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

These are distinct distinctions that ought to have separate lists. (Is your interest in the coverage of longevity to contribute to it, or to reduce it?) LE (talk) 18:09, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

I actually tried this some years ago but got serious pushback. I fully support this simplification. Legacypac (talk) 04:56, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Maria Capovilla and Maria Gomes Valentim

I would boldly merge both of these, Maria Capovilla and Maria Gomes Valentim, as mini-bios on the List of supercentenarians by continent, if only because there are so few people from there on that list. What's holding me back is 1. I'm on a device where trying to merge anything would be way too difficult and 2. I figured a little input would be good, since this would be a pretty substantial change. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:17, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree that Maria Gomes Valentim should be merged to the list by continent. I feel differently about Maria Capovilla because she was once the oldest person in the world. Those tend to keep their own articles per WP:GNG due to the extra coverage. That's a keep for me. — JFG 09:43, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Just noticed that Valentim was also briefly the oldest person in the world. Does not mean the article should automatically be kept, but it would definitely be challenged at AfD. Given the paucity of information compared to Capovilla, I would still support a merge. — JFG 10:04, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Gomes Valentim was an unusual and very confusing situation, to put it mildly. What you say makes sense, I could get on board with that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Articles about unverified "longevity claimants"

What shall we do with articles written about people who were once claimed as having lived beyond 120 years, but whose age could not be corroborated? Most of the coverage in those cases stems from the claim and the analysis thereof. Examples:

I would favor short mentions, in the Longevity claims article, of individual cases that received significant coverage. Delete and redirect personal articles, except Zhang Daoling who has historical significance independently of his claimed longevity. — JFG 10:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Add Father Akaki to that list. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:07, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I redirected him to the List of Finnish supercentenarians per WP:NOPAGE. — JFG 11:10, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Another is Kamato Hongo. I agree, having a short mention on the relevant country/continent list or on the longevity claims article could work. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:22, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Majority would come under WP:BIO1E wouldn't they? A lot of these get a brief burst of coverage that mainly consists of "person claims to be age X". Most of these articles usually go something like this: name, born, worked, got married, claims age X but isn't verified, <throw in longevity trivia here such as oldest living person is Y and ever is X, if their age was true they'd be oldest Z>, died. CommanderLinx (talk) 13:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I would think so. Probably the worst is the mess that populates Category:Indian supercentenarians; those articles are almost all implausible claims and need some serious culling. Zaro Aga, Javier Pereira (supercentenarian), and Slava Ivančević are up there too, as are a good chunk of the names in Category:Chinese supercentenarians; another set of eyes on these would be helpful. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:29, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Supercentenarian categories

What is the view on the less plausible longevity claimants being in these categories? As an example, see the list JFG put together above, or cases such as Habib Miyan and Hillel the Elder (at the latter someone reverted my removal of the Male supercentenarian category). I would think these should only be for articles on verified supercentenarians, and these people belong in some other category. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:37, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussions of interest to this project

Legacypac (talk) 05:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I just want to let everyone else know my talk page was vandalized Dec 2 by an editor, as their only edit. They were swiftly indef blocked and the comment was struck so I can't see what it was, but it was almost certainly retaliation for my work trying to help clean up the mess longevity fans created on Misplaced Pages. I'm not saying it was by Waenceslaus, but coupled with their recent troubled return it seems the longevity fanboys are striking back at us. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:00, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

You got some fan mail too, huh? And here I thought I was the only one (I can see what you got, it was some especially nasty vandalism; much worse than the one from my secret admirer). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 08:07, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

LOL. Glad I'm not alone and thanks for the info about my fan mail. The edit was only 10 min before the edit sent your way, so might be same person. Given their chosen username, I am curious if the vandalism involved a threat of violence? Newshunter12 (talk) 08:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

They caught and indefed my fan 1! It was a person who had been throwing wrenches into our AfD's for the past three months. Christmas came early this year! Newshunter12 (talk) 09:42, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

They really are pretty pathetic. DerbyCountyinNZ 10:05, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, a few CfDs here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:48, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Some more CfDs here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:05, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

List by country

I redirected List of Belgian supercentenarians to the Europe list. None of the people are even in the oldest 50 in Europe (ignoring the world) so there is nothing to merge. If that gets reverted we can AfD it. Same for List of Norwegian supercentenarians and List of Finnish supercentenarians. Later we can seek deletion of the redirects at RFD as pointless because there are no Belgians, Finns or Norwegians on the Euro list. Legacypac (talk) 19:47, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

For reference, please look at my tally of people on various national lists, including detailed counts of women/men, dead/living, residents/emigrants, verified/unverified, stats by age, plus links to national lists in native-language wikis. This can help us determine which lists are worth keeping, which age or count limits to apply, and find missing people documented on other wikis. — JFG 11:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

See new thread below: #National and continental lists — JFG 15:00, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Tagging of pages as belonging to this Wikiproject

For example Talk:List_of_German_supercentenarians is tagged as belonging to the defunct World's Oldest People project. Should we consider replacing all such tags with a tag for this project? Legacypac (talk) 19:32, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I support making this change soon, but not quite yet so that the "house" is all in order when we move this new project in. We still have more work to do before we are ready to fully roll out this project and nuke the old one, so that the rubbish/absurdities we are taking care of were only present in the old project. Newshunter12 (talk) 23:15, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Wait until the subject matter reaches some stability. However I think there is enough indication from various AfDs and related discussions for us to start drafting general project guidelines. I would not feel at ease "taking over" articles from the old project if we repeat the former's lack of scope and inclusion criteria. — JFG 12:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

AfDs of non-supercentenarian individual biographies

Here is a list of articles about non-supercentenarian subjects lacking independent notability beyond their age. Barring article improvement, most of them should be deleted or redirected.

Name	Country	Lifespan	AfD date + link	Outcome
Marjorie Newell Robb	United States (Iceberg!)	1889–1992	22 November 2018	In progress
Mary Davies Wilburn	United Kingdom (Iceberg!)	1883–1987	1 December 2018	In progress
Winnifred Quick	United Kingdom/United states (Iceberg!)	1904–2002	1 December 2018	In progress
Sid Daniels	United Kingdom (Iceberg!)	1893–1983	4 December 2018	In progress
Ruth Becker	United States (Iceberg!)	1899–1990	4 December 2018	In progress
Alden Caldwell	United States (Iceberg!)	1911–1992	4 December 2018	In progress

Discussion

Category:RMS_Titanic's_crew_and_passengers and Category:RMS Titanic survivors as well as Category:American centenarians are good places to look. Legacypac (talk) 07:34, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Not really related to this project. My take is that all Titanic survivors who are not otherwise notable (BLP1E) should be merged into a single page, possibly Passengers of the RMS Titanic#Last passenger survivors to die (how creepy is that section title!), with a line or two about their individual circumstances. Detailed biograhpical tidbits belong indeed on Titanipedia. — JFG 12:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

One of the above articles is part of the old project (how I found this mess - it was in the project AfD list) and one of the participants in our AfD's has talked about these as well. The above are part of a set of articles created to illuminate the "Oldest living survivor of the RMS Titanic" over time or are oldster "Last remaining survivors of the RMS Titanic disaster" which does clearly fall under the topic of "longevity". Notice any familiar themes? It's also unwise to leave such rot to fester so near our main focus, supercentenarians, because people are finding their way between there and our main focus. Newshunter12 (talk) 12:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

This is predominantly an issue with various military conflicts—it's a huge problem on pages such as List of surviving veterans of the Spanish Civil War—and there is some definite overlap. Setting criteria for such things is another situation in its own right (with the military vets some people at WP:MILHIST could possibly help), but one within the purview of this project. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:51, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

That is fancruft "Last survivor who was a teenager at the time of the sinking." "Last survived whonwas Canadian" "first survivor to die" good grief it is worse than GRG but at least this titanic stuff has a finite universe of bios.

We are making such progress on cleanup of supercenturians I'd hate to attract titanic fan interest that would start voting to keep super pages. Since the lists exist, we could start redirecting citing WP:NOPAGE Legacypac (talk) 17:20, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Since some editors have concerns about the impact this section could have on our supercentenarian clean up efforts, I will refrain from adding any more AfD's here for the time being, until we are at a more complete stage with the supers effort. It really would suck as Legacypac said if Titanic fans started voting in super AfD's in an effort to keep their own cruft pages. Newshunter12 (talk) 23:56, 4 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+
Belgian	20 / 3	22 / 1	21 / 2	20 / 3	23	23F+3M	All	12	8	3	0	0	0	0	0
Dutch (merged)	32 / 4	34 / 2	33 / 3	31 / 5	36	29F+3M	All	23	8	2	2	0	1	0	0
French	103 / 4	103 / 4	102 / 5	104 / 3	107	295	100	8+	42	33	13	9	1	0	1
German	82 / 9	84 / 7	71 / 20	70 / 21	91	134	100	46+	25+	15	3	1	1	0	0
Italian	106 / 9	106 / 9	107 / 8	109 / 6	115	—	100	39+	35	24	10	2	3	1	1
Spanish	66 / 12	76 / 2	70 / 8	65 / 13	78	64	All	37	23	8	4	4	1	1	0
Portuguese	10 / 2	12 / 0	9 / 3	11 / 1	12	19	All	1	4	2	2	2	1	0	0
Polish (deleted)	3 / 0	2 / 1	3 / 0	3 / 0	3	21	All	1	1	1	0	0	0	0	0
Danish	14 / 1	13 / 2	9 / 6	5 / 10	15	—	All	8	5	0	1	0	1	0	0
Swedish	24 / 3	25 / 2	23 / 4	18 / 9	27	27 68	All	18	5	3	1	0	0	0	0
Norwegian	16 / 3	19 / 0	14 / 5	17 / 2	19	20	All	12	5	2	0	0	0	0	0
Finnish	8 / 2	10 / 0	10 / 0	10 / 0	10	10	All	6	3	1	0	0	0	0	0
British	113 / 7	113 / 7	110 / 10	110 / 10	120	—	100	28+	49	20	14	7	2	0	0
Irish	10 / 0	9 / 1	3 / 7	10 / 0	10	—	All	5	2	1	2	0	0	0	0
Total Europe	54 / 2	51 / 5	51 / 5	55 / 1	56	—	50+5	244+	235+	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	74 / 6	74 / 6	68 / 12	65 / 15	80	—	All	35	20	13	8	1	2	0	1
USA	137 / 9	103 / 43	110 / 10	142 / 4	146	—	100	16	15+	7+	44+	44	13	5	2
Rest of North America	Missing data				9+	—	All	Missing data
South America	13 / 2	12 / 3	11 / 4	11 / 4	15	—	All	2	4	3	3	2	0	1	0
Japanese	114 / 8	88 / 34	120 / 2	118 / 4	122	—	100	4+	15+	25+	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

Antonia Plaat-Kolenbrander is mistakenly listed as non-verified in this edit.
^ Trimmed by national limit to 100 people
^ The national list on German Misplaced Pages includes many more people aged 110 and 111, who are no longer verified by the GRG.
Combining all four Nordic countries
^ Due to limits on national lists for France, Germany, Italy and UK, many people aged 110 and 111 are not accounted for.
^ Includes only living people, probably not all of them
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.
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.
^ Includes only a few of the living people

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

Keep national lists which include a hundred people or close: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Canada, USA and Japan.
Redirect/merge national lists with fewer than 50 people: Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden
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".
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:
- 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.
- 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.

Opinions? — JFG 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)

Possible off Wiki canvassing

Just a heads up that a few brand new accounts have been popping up in a few AFDs to vote keep. Either someone is sockpuppetting to get around a topic ban or indefinite block or there is canvassing going on off Wiki somewhere again. Just in case these SPAs disrupt AFDs to try and keep an eye out for them. CommanderLinx (talk) 01:12, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? E Eng 01:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

This AFD had at least three new users who voted keep and another who hadn't edited in 6 years decided this AFD is the best time to return. CommanderLinx (talk) 03:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

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