Yes, a bot-driven list would be quite helpful, if for no other reason than being standardized and therefore race- and gender-blind as far as selection criteria.  I have just finished compiling a list from the NYT article, and it was very labor intensive just to generate the list, before even starting to look for red links.

Note, obituary notices from international newspapers are "articles", not advertisements; for further info see the NYT article on how to tell their classified pages from an article. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/business/media/25asktheeditors.html Also see the WP article on "obituary". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obituary

The *articles* referenced in the above "lists of notable deaths in 2015" are:

*Los Angeles Times, "Notable deaths of 2015" http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-2015-notable-deaths-gallery-photogallery.html

*The Washington Post, "Notable deaths of 2015 and 2016" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/notable-deaths-of-2015/2015/01/06/8a2c7536-92b6-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_gallery.html

*The Wall Street Journal, "2015 Year in Review: Notable Deaths" http://www.wsj.com/articles/2015-year-in-review-notable-deaths-1450647522

*The Telegraph, "Culture stars who died in 2015" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/culture-stars-who-died-in-2015/

*BBC, "Notable UK deaths of 2015" http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35060400

*New York Times, "Notable Deaths of 2015" http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/obituaries/notable-deaths-2015.html?_r=1

Out of the 200-odd notable deaths in the NYT article, the following women are red links:
December: Mariuccia Mandelli, Peggy Say;  November; Janet Wolfe; October: Olga Hirshhorn; August:Blondell Cummings, April: Evelyn Starks Hardy, Anne-Claude Leflaive.

In addition, there are problems noted--several of the articles are stubs, one appears to be at the wrong name, one shares an article with her husband, and others have tags for reasons that are not immediately apparent.  One could wish the people who tag these things would actually fix them if they see a problem, or at least leave a note on the talk page. I noted several of the articles did not have photos, but did not make a note of that.  Is there some checklist?  It would seem if they are now deceased it would be possible to find a fair-use image. Complete notes and links, as well as links to existing articles are at: https://neotarf.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/lists-of-notable-deaths-of-2015/

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 2:59 PM, J Hayes <slowking4@gmail.com> wrote:

i should not imagine a fear of paid notices, should prevent a systematic inclusion of NYTimes obits, which are assumed notable.

especially with the reference generator doing all the formatting.

no one is doing this; the article mentions 25% female among these. i.e. we don't include reliable sources even to the extent they present less of a gap than we do.

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 2:16 PM, Daniel and Elizabeth Case <dancase@frontiernet.net> wrote:

>At least in the USA, we have to be cautious about "what is an obituary." Newspapers also run "death notices" which (both in print and >online) look much like obituaries, but are actually paid advertisements. I'm not even certain that the terminology ("obituary"=editorial, >"death notice"=paid ad) is consistent across news outlets, I'm just reflecting what I learned from the specific papers I dealt with after >my dad died.

 

Writing as someone who once got paid to write newspaper obits, “paids” are, in print, always in [[agate type]], like sports boxscores; obits look like any other story in the same newspaper.

 

However, textwise, the distinction may be blurring as newspapers cut back on expenses (such as the newbies and interns who cut their journalistic teeth writing obits. Just earlier this week, a young coworker of my wife’s died rather suddenly; when I saw his obit in our local paper I figured they had just printed the text the funeral home sent along since it read like a paid, with all sorts of flowery, non-NPOV language that we never included in obits back in the mid-‘90s regardless of what the funeral home said in the fax, no mention whatsoever of the cause of death, and mentions of a rather wide scope of survivors (the main reason for paids, as families of the decedents usually want to mention relatives outside the scope of the immediate family that newspapers limit their obits to for space if nothing else).

 

Daniel Case

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