Gareth Owen wrote:
Well, it pretty much proves that his only real claim to fame is the fact he died on 9/11.
Which in turn means that he does, in fact, have a claim to fame, and should be included, right?
And it proves the only reason that Cunc is pushing for his non-deletion is because he has a bee in his bonnet -- and has had for the best part of the last 2 years -- about trying to make wikipedia.org a monument to 9/11. Its not, or at least it shouldn't be.
Well, I understand where you're coming from here, although I think that's a bit unfair to Cunc. We started sep11.wikipedia.org in an effort to resolve the problem of 'memorials' instead of article. And Cunc was basically supportive of that idea, as I recall.
Does dying at Ypres make you noteworthy? Does dying in the Hundred Years War make you noteworthy? Does dying in Auschwitz make you noteworthy? Does dying in the 1918-1919 inflenza epidemic make you noteworthy? Does dying of industrial related illnesses due to management incompetence in Welsh coal mines make you noteworthy? [0]
My answer to all of these would hinge on confirmability by other contributors. I personally find the history of ordinary people quite interesting, particularly if placed in the context of a time.
[0] Please say yes, I feel like my grandfather needs a write up. Please say no, I'd just like to see the reasons.
Are there newspaper articles about your grandfather? Anything that we could easily verify?
[1] (The WTC collapse killed 2,792 people in one day. The 1919 inflenza killed 22 million people in 18 months, or equivalent to 10-15 9/11s, every day)
*nod* But if your point is that we can't have articles about all those people, I'd say that we're arguing then about a non-existent problem, because no one is trying to add those articles, are they?
Think along the lines of Studs Terkel's _Hard Times_, a book about ordinary people during the great depression, oral histories. The people in the book are, arguably, not noteworthy. But reading about them is valuable because they took part in an important time and event (the U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s).
--Jimbo