Wikipedia:Featured list removal candidates/List of HIV-positive people/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list removal nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was kept by User:Matthewedwards 23:54, 19 June 2008 [1].

List of HIV-positive people[edit]

Contacted Garion96, Orlady and Trezatium.

  • Keep—Glad the article has been improved during the process. Still a little hazy about the "pragmatic" approach to the requirement for comprehensiveness. I'll shut up about it and watch how the issue is treated. Utterly fails Criterion 3: Comprehensiveness. It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing a complete set of items where practical, or otherwise at least all of the major items; where appropriate,...

Since this is of the second type (the "otherwise"), it must include at least all of the major items, i.e., all of the major people who have HIV in each category. It doesn't. It will never be able to to do this, since (1) many many people do not disclose their HIV-positive status, and (2) many many people don't know their HIV-positive status.

A second aspect of non-comprehensiveness is the bias towards American and, to a lesser extent, British people. How many Indian actors, for example, have HIV?

What's an "adult film actor"? If that's coy-speak for "porn star", it should be linked to that article, at least on first occurrence.

A minor issue: why the final periods after non-sentences in the "Comments" column? TONY (talk) 15:14, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep It does include all of the major items. Of course only published in reliable sources. The fact that many people don't include their status or don't know about it is not a reason to say it is not comprehensive. These are obviously not included in reliable sources so can't be in the list. Regarding the bias towards the Anglo-Saxon world. The reason for that is that it was decided to not use red links in the list per Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Only people with a Wikipedia article are included and since this is the English Wikipedia....

I think adult film actor was the name of the article at the time it was featured. I see it is now Pornographic actor so I can add a link to that. The same for the final periods, if it is grammatically correct to have no periods they can be removed. Garion96 (talk) 16:26, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Am I not understanding something. If it's a "dynamic" or "incomplete" list, it must include at least all of the major items (people, in this case). The way the scope (and title) are framed, this is impossible. I know of someone "major" who should be listed, for example, but it's a private matter. At the moment, it's impossible to guage whether the selection is POV, and that is another breach of the criteria. Just how were they selected? TONY (talk) 17:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If it is not published in a reliable source how can it be "major"? Only in regards to Wikipedia of course. The criteria for the list are 1: Person has a Wikipedia article 2: HIV/AIDS information is published in a reliable source. Garion96 (talk) 17:38, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding selection methods, I have spent quite a while trawling the archives of the New York Times and other newspapers, books on the history of AIDS, and Wikipedia itself (using Google). Given the nature of these sources, some geographical bias is inevitable (and consistent with the rest of en-WP). Nevertheless, I would be very surprised if anyone found a really notable omission. Trezatium (talk) 12:05, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep WP has always taken a pragmatic approach to judging the comprehensiveness of effectively unbounded people lists. If reviewers can find many more entries for the list, then it is probably not comprehensive. For a list this size, I'd expect to be able to find a few either overlooked or recently made public. You'd also expect to find a handful that might be added if only reliable sources could be found.
The title cannot contain the words "notable" or "famous" because WP guidelines forbid it, and WP lists only notable people anyway. I suggest the scope definition in the lead be tweaked to include "notable" to clarify things. Notability, for these purposes, has always been defined as having (or a reasonable expectation of having) an en-WP article. The HIV status of these people must be known and in the public domain. I think that is reasonably clear from the lead definition + the requirements of WP:BLP.
The list is biased but that is probably a consequence of being on en-WP, requiring reliable sources, the nature of the disease, the freedom to which certain societies allow people to be open about having it, and the extent to which journalists are interested in writing about people with some careers rather than others. If, for example, there are several notable Bollywood actors missing from the list, then that might imply the editors weren't researching wide enough. Some specific examples of insufficiency are needed. Colin°Talk 18:44, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That might help, but the title is still wrong: "List of known HIV-positive people" would normally be a tautology in this context, but here it's essential, since so many people in the categories chosen do not know.
PS Is there a list of people with Hep-C? TONY (talk) 02:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
List of people with hepatitis C, of course. I know there are missing attributes in the title of these lists, but WP:NAME encourages a compromise between simple, obvious titles and precise but unwieldy ones. Where do we draw the line: "List of people known to be HIV-positive, who are open about it, and have been written about by English-language journalists"? With Hep C, the unknowns utterly dwarf the knowns. That's mentioned briefly in the lead, but a full discussion of the epidemiology of Hep C belongs in the disease article. Perhaps the HIV list could mention some basic stats about what proportion of HIV-carriers are ignorant of their status? I wouldn't oppose changing the name to "List of known HIV-positive people" but don't feel it is "essential". Colin°Talk 08:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In which case, the scope of the list might be more carefully delineated in the lead. At the moment, "categorised" is vague in the first sentence, and seems to promise that all whose HIV-positive status is known (just to themselves and their doctor?) will be listed below. The second sentence says the list is 33.2 million (which, BTW, I find too precise at one decimal point, given the limits of the methodology).

This is a categorized, alphabetical list of people who are known to have been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the pathogen that causes AIDS, including those who have died. UNAIDS and the WHO estimate that, as of December 2007, the number of people living with HIV has reached its highest level, at around 33.2 million

TONY (talk) 09:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. 33 million is more appropriate here. Should the "categorized, alphabetical" aspect of the list be moved out of the lead sentence? How would you make "categorized" less "vague" and why? It is just an arbitrary grouping for convenience, rather than any exact scientific division. I'm puzzled about the "reached its highest level" statement. I first read this as "has peaked" but I actually think it means "is still growing". Could we just say "... December 2007, the number of people living with HIV is around 33 million"? Colin°Talk 09:53, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That number is derived directly from the source though. To be specific "33.2 million [30.6–36.1 million]". Why should it be a round number when the source itself does not specify a round number? Garion96 (talk) 10:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That range is a confidence interval, though the source doesn't say what level of confidence they used (probably 95%). The value quoted (33.2) is the mean value of their estimates. Outside of a scientific paper, these number aren't particularly interesting and on its own, 33.2 million makes the reader think the confidence interval could be [33.1–33.3 million]. Saying "33 million" or even "over 30 million" is better. It is just an estimate. Colin°Talk 10:30, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I know. I just don't like to change a source derived number. Even for something minor as this. Garion96 (talk) 10:48, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You could ask Eubulides. He knows far more than I do about what is acceptable and correct in this regard. Colin°Talk 11:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We've strayed onto an unexpected issue. There are more things at stake: I'm unwilling to give our readers the idea that the numbers can be calculated to that degree of accuracy, for some of the reasons I've given above. And there's the time problem: the numbers infected are growing at an alarming rate. In a year, how many will be added? 33 point something is very misleading in these circumstances. I'm happy for "well over 30 million". TONY (talk) 12:50, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence associates the estimate with a precise date, and in any case the growth is perhaps less dramatic than you think - see slide 4 here. UNAIDS have chosen to give three significant figures; why assume we know better? Trezatium (talk) 13:08, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've asked Eubulides for his learned opinion. Tony, you hint that there are there other aspects of the article that you'd like examined? Colin°Talk 13:19, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) "Learned"? (Them's fightin' words. :-)

  • I faced the same problem in AIDS #Epidemiology and settled for "Globally, an estimated 33.2 million people lived with HIV in 2007, including 2.5 million children." This says "estimated", which tells the reader the number isn't exact. For estimates where the range is quite wide I also gave the range, for example, "An estimated 2.5 million (range 1.8–4.1 million) people were newly infected in 2007, including 420,000 children."
  • The ranges are not 95% confidence intervals; they are merely plausibility bounds. Please see Understanding the new UNAIDS estimates, reference 4.
  • There is no single right way to present estimates like these; a lot of it depends on the presumed competence (and impatience level) of your readership.
  • Unless there are dueling estimates and considerable controversy (which is not the case here) I think it's better not to put the source in the main text, as it clutters up the text; a footnote is plenty.
  • I reviewed that paragraph in the lead and found a couple of problems. The cited source does not give the estimate "More than 25 million others have died" (at least, I could not find it anywhere in the cited source). There is also an unsourced claim that AIDS is one of the most destructive pandemics in recorded history.
  • The cited source does estimate 2007 deaths, so we can include that. I think it helpful to briefly mention that about 15% are children (this fits into the Ryan White picture) and that the vast majority of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa (to give a global perspective).
  • I made this change to try to address the above problems. Hope it helps.

Eubulides (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Perhaps it's because I'm relatively new to FLC that I quail at the potential for POV (in inclusion/exclusion, whether on purpose or by accident) in the selection process for many lists of people. Even more so for lists of, say, alumni of univerisities, where it's impossible for reviewers to tell whether there's a bias in the selection. Adult film actors is a bad term: could be antonym of "child film actors", an unfortunate couplet. At least a hyphen (adult-film actors), or call a spade a spade. Could the title at least be changed to "List of notable HIV-positive people"? TONY (talk) 13:32, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But "notable" is different per the dictionary and per WP:N. A reader would think the title refers to the former while it actually refers to the latter. indopug (talk) 11:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, it looks comprehensive and complete enough to me. GreenJoe 00:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The list is admittedly not complete. However, it's impressively comprehensive, and thus meets the FL criteria. My involvement with it began 3 months ago when I added Terry Dolan, who I considered to be a serious omission. After adding him, I spent a little time searching for noteworthy omissions and did not find any.
It would, however, be helpful to add some words to the intro to clarify that the list is limited to notable people (including some who are notable solely in connection with their infection).
In spite of the "rule" that all names on the list must have their own articles, I see at least one name that is on the list without having an article. The former article about Gugu Dlamini (a woman who who was stoned and stabbed to death for admitting she had AIDS) was converted to a redirect to this list article. IMO, it is reasonable for the list to include people who lack articles if they are notable only in connection with their infection status. --Orlady (talk) 21:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: It will never be complete (we're in for a lot of lawsuits if this can't be reliably sourced) but Wikipedia's policy is that it strives for verifiability, not truth. Therefore, verifiable entries only is enough for an FL, it will never be complete as more people are born/diagnosed every second - but what it has is enough...... Dendodge .. TalkHelp 20:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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