Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of unidentified murder victims in Arizona

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 16:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of unidentified murder victims in Arizona

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List of unidentified murder victims in Arizona (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This article is a random very small sampling of unidentified murder victims in Arizona that probably aren't independently notable (with the exception of a few with stand alone articles). It's essentially listcruft. Even the namings of the cases by location are problematic because many of these counties have hundreds if not thousands of Jane and John Does in their cold case files. I'm not seeing how this indiscriminate list benefits the encyclopedia or meets the criteria at WP:NLIST. 4meter4 (talk) 03:45, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adendum. I am also nominating the following related pages because of the same reasoning based on the outcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of unidentified murder victims in Pennsylvania. As it is a related AFD, I am pinging Clarityfiend, TH1980, Pharaoh of the Wizards, and Heartmusic678.4meter4 (talk) 04:02, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of unidentified murder victims in California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
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List of unidentified murder victims in Florida (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
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List of unidentified murder victims in Georgia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
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List of unidentified murder victims in Michigan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
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List of unidentified murder victims in New York (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
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List of unidentified murder victims in Texas (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
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Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Arizona-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Florida-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Georgia (U.S. state)-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Michigan-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per Vladimir.copic. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:15, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Merge novel entries with articles to List of unidentified murder victims in the United States, but delete these pages. -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 22:04, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment you can not vote delete and merge. If merged - the history of the article should be kept. See WP:Copying within Wikipedia. Christian75 (talk) 06:17, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I could vote for a merge, but the target is 300 kb large and my browser is hanging when loading the page. Oppose removing entries without an article - we should have entries which have references, and removing the ones withour. Christian75 (talk) 06:12, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Christian75, the sources without entries are largely sourced to one source, The Doe Network, and the primary author of these entries on wikipedia has assigned arbitrary names not based in the sources to those subjects; basically drawing their own unique conclusions and creating what amounts to WP:Original Synthesis. There is a reason why we have policies like WP:No original research and the need to verify content with multiple reliable sources (see WP:Verifiability). Additionally, The Doe Network profiles are essentially copy pasted law enforcement case files with law enforcement case numbers as titles, and are therefore not independent but are considered primary sources. Therefore, these individual unidentifiable murder victims lack independent RS which makes them unsuitable for use within wikipedia per WP:PRIMARY.4meter4 (talk) 14:49, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The "List of unidentified murder victims in 'state name'" are splitted from List of unidentified murder victims in the United States. WP:Deletion is not cleanup and any entries with poor references could be removed without any afd and the "list of" articles could be merged into the main list article. Christian75 (talk) 09:08, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While that's true, the main issue raised here is indiscrimination and whether such a list is even encyclopedic; as it's such a small and random collection of articles within a very large population. That's a discussion topic that extends beyond the purview of a MERGE discussion which is why it was brought to AFD. Merge is of course a valid outcome at AFD and you are free to argue the solution you just gave; but this was not a clean-up nomination.4meter4 (talk) 16:27, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I see some merge proposals but that would just migrate the issues this proposer has with the smaller article to another, bigger article. I don't see this topic inherently as unencyclopedic. There's certainly a discriminate dimension to it and I don't think all of these are necessarily qualified to be here but arguably some cases are more noteworthy due to a larger abundance of information, attention and efforts given to the case, age, new information in recent years or various other reasons. This discussion hasn't attracted many people but I believe some input from crime project editors would be desirable for this disccusion and the direction of these types of pages. In any case, I'm opposed to Lompoc Jane Doe being expunged because her case has inspired a novel and experimental use of genetic genealogy on decedents which has become a norm now after having been used for different types of investigations. --Killuminator (talk) 00:09, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (vehemently). This information is an invaluable and concise source of information which is used as a reference and sourcing point on the web for sleuths (amateur and professional) to resolve these cases. Actually seems to fuel the passion to resolve the cases to a degree, and there is an impressive rate of solving them. This is not an obscure, ad-hoc "expand and remain" list. Personally, segmentizing the states with a particularly large number of noteworthy, "active" entries makes the List of unidentified murder victims in the United States easier to navigate (and may also prevent an almost inevitable future complaint that article is too elongated or exhaustive). I feel a sense of disbelief these articles have been flagged as such. They should not be merged. If you browse this topic enough on other websites (any state), these articles seem to have earned the public's trust and are like a combined nucleus for overall information on unsolved/unidentified cases.--Kieronoldham (talk) 04:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to Killuminator and Kieronoldham. I really don't think opposing a merge is helpful, as almost all of the entries in these lists lack secondary sources and are cited to one of three primary sources, The Doe Network website or NAMUS website or National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The Doe Network is basically a copy paste of NAMUS, and both NAMUS's and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's entries are primary sources. As such The Doe Network profiles are considered primary sources too which makes them unsuitable for use within wikipedia per WP:PRIMARY (unless they are being used in conjunction with secondary and tertiary sources which isn’t the case in much of this list).
Further, the use of these sources has not been done carefully with arbitrary location based names assigned to the murder victims not based in the cited primary sources which use law enforcement codes to label each unidentified body (largely because there are many unidentified bodies associated with most of these locations which is why they have coded names not place names). The location based naming and organization system used in the wikipedia lists are original to wikipedia and were compiled by drawing unique conclusions which amounts to WP:Original Synthesis. There is a reason why we have policies like WP:No original research and the need to verify content with multiple reliable independent sources (see WP:Verifiability).
All of this to say, how is this encyclopedic? NAMUS recovers over 4,000 unidentified bodies every year in the United States, out of which typically 25% remain unsolved. We are looking at thousands of unidentified murder victims in their database so I'm not really seeing how this tiny number of cases are encyclopedic. Further most of these cases aren't notable because they lack secondary and tertiary sources with in-depth coverage. Wikipedia's purpose and role is not to advocate or draw attention to unidentified murder victims and do the work of law enforcement agencies like NAMUS or assist amateur sleuths. It seems like these pages were created as a tool for advocacy which is outside of Wikipedia's purview (which is to be an encyclopedia). These lists are essentially WP:SYNTH of primary sources and their creation has WP:POV and WP:COI issues as described at Wikipedia:Advocacy.4meter4 (talk) 16:48, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your observation ("Wikipedia's purpose and role is not to advocate or draw attention to unidentified murder victims and do the work of law enforcement agencies like NAMUS or assist amateur sleuths"), but there is potential in Wiki as a referencing tool (even initially). If the likes of Google place Wiki. at the top of immediate search engine results for many a topic, perhaps it should be utilized as such if one is searching for topics as diverse as those Wiki. hosts.--Kieronoldham (talk) 08:05, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Kieronoldham, I can appreciate your WP:ITSUSEFUL argument, but given that this content has both WP:VERIFIABILITY issues because it lacks independent secondary and tertiary sources, and its a WP:SYNTH of primary material, I don't see how we can justify this content as encyclopedic. Our policies at WP:SIGCOV require sources to be secondary, and the vast majority of these entries have no secondary sources validating its content. Nor are they likely to have secondary sources, because the vast majority of John and Jane Does found never get independent coverage.4meter4 (talk) 16:02, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: For an inclusion that meets criteria for articlespace, there should be significant coverage of the primary topic, which should pertain to the collective amount of alleged victims. Coverage that only covers each in the media does not count. There is no indication of significant coverage of the subject. Multi7001 (talk) 22:05, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, I agree with those who want this article kept. Davidgoodheart (talk) 21:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect all to List of unidentified murder victims in the United States for attribution purposes, at the very most. Edit history of merged content, of which there are several examples here such as these ones found from an edit summary search, should not be deleted for attribution purposes. I came here from this village pump discussion and have no opinion on the actual content, just the attribution. Graham87 10:45, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Graham87 I’m not sure if we actually will be merging content originally posted in the split out articles. Most if not all of the content that is non-problematic originated in the parent article before the split of articles by state were created. As such, attribution isn’t really an issue here.4meter4 (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @4meter4: The problem is not that content *might* be merged, but the fact that it already has and there are already edit summaries pointing to the state-based articles. Graham87 02:19, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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