Category talk:Deaths by cause and country

Proposal: Use of this category and its subcategories[change source]

Category:Deaths by city was recently deleted via rfd because it was felt that the place of a person's death is not usually significant. (See Wikipedia:Requests for deletion/Requests/2013/Category:Deaths by city for that discussion.) In keeping with that, I propose that Category:Deaths by country and its subcategories not be used for deaths of individuals. I propose that these categories be used only for:

deaths by cause subcategories
events where multiple people died in a single occurrence (plane crashes, bombings, tsunamis, etc.)

If the community agrees, this would mean:

Entries for individuals would be removed from categories such as "Deaths in X", where "X" represents a ~~type of~~ location such as a country, state, county, etc.
Removing the individual deaths from those categories would leave many "Deaths in" categories with only zero, one, or two entries. I propose that such categories be deleted, with their contents recategorized as needed.

Please note:

Individual deaths would remain in location-based categories that also mention cause of death, such as Category:Accidental deaths in the United Kingdom, Category:Disease-related deaths in Canada, etc.
Individual deaths would remain in "deaths by cause" categories that do not specify location, such as Category:Assassinated people, Category:Deaths in childbirth, etc.

Please comment. Thank you. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:24, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I entirely agree. These suggestions follow the consensus on "Deaths by city". Just because something is a fact does not make it noteworthy. Charles Darwin, noteworthy for so many things, died in England. That, though a fact, is absolutely not notable, and categories full of thousands of such cases are quite useless. Basically, the rule of thumb should be notability, not "something we know is true". Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:28, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Some people, especially those who died many decades ago, do not have a known cause of death, hence they cannot be subcatted into cats such as Category:Cancer deaths in England or Category:Infectious disease deaths in France. Jim Michael (talk) 13:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Such articles do not need to be in a "deaths by location" category. That was sort of the point of the rfd discussion. We don't need every biographical article to be in a category that indicates location of death. The only reason the "deaths from X in Y" categories might be needed is to see how common certain causes of death are in a given place. Of course, those give that info only for the people we happen to have articles for, so even they are of limited use. --Auntof6 (talk) 13:26, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would support this. -DJSasso (talk) 18:04, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support, also noting that this is in line with the consensus previously established on the RfD. Chenzw Talk 02:55, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all who commented. There being four people supporting and one opposed, I will implement the proposal. I will leave a notice on the talk pages of the two users I know of who created most of these categories, User:TDKR Chicago 101 and User:Jim Michael. I will put a note on each "Deaths in X" category that doesn't end up deleted, explaining that it should not be used for individual people. --Auntof6 (talk) 08:50, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]