Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher Hoban

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 delete‎. ✗plicit 11:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Christopher Hoban

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Christopher Hoban (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Fails WP:VICTIM. Sadly police officer deaths are not unusual, and this particular officer was only known because of his murder.4meter4 (talk) 10:36, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as the nominator notes, this could very well just be retitled. Not a reason for deletion. Such articles should use requested moves not AfD. Failing WP:VICTIM is not a reason for deletion it's a reason for retitling. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:26, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As pointed out to in another discussion PARAKANYAA, this is not a policy based vote but an WP:IAR vote. Arguing that a possible ATD should subvert discussing deletion policy is both irresponsible and lazy. Further, I don't think a retitling works here as the murder itself is not notable and fails WP:NEVENT. Under what basis does the sourcing pass WP:EVENTCRIT? The sourcing does not pass a single criteria demonstrating evidence of lasting or significant impact. The coverage is WP:ROUTINE.4meter4 (talk) 19:56, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(The ping did not work because you forgot to sign, FWIW). As pointed out in the other AfD, you are incorrect. There have been somewhere in the realm of dozens of person -> event moves for this very reason in the past few months. The very clear solution is to add three words to the title, which is a whole lot easier than taking it to AfD. If your assertion is that the murder itself fails NEVENT, that is a different and more reasonable assertion for deletion which can be checked. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:50, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with that thinking PARAKANYAA is that the article is currently a biography and not an event so WP:NEVENT doesn't apply currently to an AFD nom. VICTIM is the policy that I could cite. Regardless, the murder itself is not notable as an event so this is the right forum either way. This article is essentially a memorial page and fails WP:NOTMEMORIAL. 4meter4 (talk) 19:56, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@4meter4 There is so little here about him as a person I don't see it that way. That an article is mistitled is, IMO, not a notability problem, if it can be fixed through a WP:RM and renaming two headings. I'll check if it passes NEVENT and then re-vote. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:01, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Articles titled after people are biographies under our policy PARAKANYAA. They are not event pages. Period. You are fundamentally making a foundational error here on how we treat pages under policy. Look at the banners at Talk:Christopher Hoban. Both banners are BIOGRAPHY projects.4meter4 (talk) 20:05, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to what? Biographical or BLP material can be in any article, regardless of what it is titled. There are plenty of pages tagged biographies that aren't biographies, there are plenty of mistagged articles, because WikiProject tags mean literally nothing. WikiProjects do not own anything. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would think this would be self explanatory. One doesn't need a policy for "The sky is blue." A person is not an event. A person is a person. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) has no people titles in it anywhere for a reason. Wikipedia:Article titles places all its policies on titling people in relation to biographies. Perhaps an WP:RFC is needed on this to tighten our policies to make it clear (although it seems distinctly and glaringly obvious) that any article with a person's name as the title is a biography page. Best.4meter4 (talk) 20:16, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A person who is only notable for one event is a subtopic of the event, so the event notability is obviously what is of relevance. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:19, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No it isn't. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) is specific that we title events to "time and place". A person is not isolated to time and place; nor are they a sub-thread of a single event in their lives. I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but saying that a person is a sub-topic of a single event is dehumanizing, and its confusing. Nobody reading wikipedia is going to interpret an article titled for a person as an event page. They will perceive it as a biography.4meter4 (talk) 20:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and so the articles are mistitled from what the actual notable topic is. Why on earth would you delete a notable topic instead of adding three words to the title or spending 2 minutes shuffling it around? So the name should be changed. For the purposes of WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E, we cover the event first and only split it out if there is enough material/coverage to do so, so it is a very much a "subtopic". And, so what? PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:35, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it is so simple. There are real editorial and content issues at play. Most of these articles named for victims and not events should be deleted under WP:TNT because they aren't written with a proper encyclopedic focus/scope. WP:NOTMEMORIAL is a big problem, as is providing too many personal details about the victim extraneous to the event. One of the major problems in this content area is making an event page a substitute for biography on a person not notable outside of the event. A lot of personal life stuff shouldn't be there both out of respect for the privacy of the victim and their family, and as off-topic to the event. We shouldn't be using event pages as a proxy for biographies on victims which is what is happening. It's wrong ethically and editorially as an encyclopedia. The event is notable, not the person in most of these cases, and the biographical content should only place the event in context and not memorialize the person. It isn't encyclopedic to do otherwise under WP:NOT and WP:CRIME. Retitling the page doesn't solve the problem in 99% of these articles. They need to be majorly restructured and rewritten.4meter4 (talk) 20:46, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree entirely, and I think that is a wild misapplication of what WP:TNT is for. TNT is for absolutely hopeless cases, given as examples "Copyright violations, extensive cases of advocacy, undisclosed paid sock farms, and extensive improper use of large language models" - not reasonably editorial changes. And how much of the victim's personal life is relevant will obviously vary by case, and what the secondary sources themselves cover - it is not our job to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, which is what you are arguing we do. Your proposed solution seems more unethical to me, if anything. And that is not what you argued initially, so if that is your actual reason for deletion you should have said so instead of hiding it. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:52, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's completely spurious given the cogent NEVENT argument I made which you agree with, and a WP:BADFAITH interpretation of this conversation. Further, violations of WP:NOT are clearly a valid reason to implement WP:TNT as its a core foundation policy that ungirds and supercedes every other policy page other than the WP:PILLARS.4meter4 (talk) 20:59, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, it isn't. All NOTMEMORIAL says is thus:
"Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements. (WP:RIP is excluded from this rule.)"
If the person is notable, or their murder is notable, it is not a deletion worthy issue over how the article is written. NOTMEMORIAL says nothing about how the article is written!
But at this point, we aren't even arguing about this AfD, so the conversation should either end or be taken elsewhere. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. We are in agreement on the outcome of this article which is what matters. You have raised a few points which point to ambiguity in our policy language. I may pursue crafting an WP:RFC to clarify titling policy on victims/events involving crime. We may need to update our policies to prevent conflicts like these in future, and perhaps provide a more streamlined pathway(s) to address these issues more clearly. It would be a lot simpler for example if we required articles on people known primarily as the victims of a single event to be titled with a year and event action with their name. That way it prevents arguments and gets people in the habit of creating articles with that practice. It also would inherently focus the content on the event. Obviously there should be some sort of thresh-hold where a person becomes notable beyond the event, and we should have criteria that helps determine that. There should probably be an WP:MOS guideline as well for articles on crime events specifically. Best.4meter4 (talk) 21:17, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete because sadly, cop killings were very common 20 to 30 years ago. I come from a family of cops and teachers. I would object to renaming the article to "Killing if ..." as we have done sometimes. Bearian (talk) 05:44, 12 January 2025 (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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